The other day I saw something happen on the road.
A woman was driving a nice, new, cream-colored luxury SUV with gold trim in the lane to my left. She was a young woman, blonde, ponytail, big sunglasses.
I've seen men do what she was about to do. Perhaps you've seen it too
We were moving along at about 35 miles per hour. And there were school buses in traffic, and at the lights there were children waiting to cross the street. A truck slowed down for cars pulling into a Starbucks. A bicyclist cruised past.
I glanced over and there she was, moving along, except she wasn't looking at the road ahead of her. She was looking at her cellphone, touching keys, her car keeping speed. The only way she'd know of the crash would be the crunch of the body against her car.
So I hit the horn, angry. She sped up, then slowed. She lifted her right hand — the one with the phone in it — and saluted me with her middle finger.
She held that finger up there as she drove off.
Several minutes later, on the highway, it happened again. This time the driver was in an older black sedan. She had closely cropped hair, silvery, her head down as she typed something on the keys of the phone in her lap. Again I hit the horn, pressed it down.
She looked up, and must have seen me, open-mouthed, angry, telling her to stop it. She didn't give me the finger. Instead, she laughed.
And laughed and laughed.
I could see her gold teeth catching the morning sun.
Both times I could feel my blood coming up. But I didn't allow road rage to build. I just drove on to work, wondering when it would happen:
When would these texting drivers kill a kid, or another driver, or a bicyclist, or some other pedestrian?
Not if, but when.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that in 2010 distracted driving was the cause of 18 percent of all fatal crashes. That's 3,092 people killed, and an additional 416,000 or so injured in such crashes.
Illinois has a law against texting and driving. If cited, you can receive a fine. But some states don't yet ban it. According to a recent report in USA Today, these include Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Arizona and Hawaii.
But in Illinois, if you're texting while driving and convicted of injuring someone, you can face fines of $2,500 and up to a year in jail. And if you're convicted of causing death, it can be $25,000 and up to three years in prison.
State lawmakers are no doubt proud of their prohibitions. But there's something deadly wrong. Why not jail time for a first offense, whether you hit anyone or not?
Would we merely fine someone juggling knives at a preschool or on a corner crowded with pedestrians? A car with a driver who won't look at the road is more dangerous than some knife juggler.
A fine is too cheap and easy.
I'd be a liar if I told you that years ago I didn't text while driving. I've done it, and I'm ashamed.
To most of us, the phone has become a device with a thrumming urgency. We're addicted. It's a dog whistle from the tech giants who shape the mind of the world, their gizmos literally reconfiguring neural pathways in the brain.
But I stopped texting while driving a long while ago for this reason: I can still remember the screech of the tires on that dry, sunny afternoon.
No one was touched or hurt, but I can hear those tires in my sleep and see the leaves skittering along the curb and the back of that flatbed truck coming up at me.
The anti-texting movement has spawned a series of new public service announcements just now being broadcast. The TV commercials show cute teenagers who text while driving and what happens to them. They die.
But the problem with PSAs is that they're soon mocked. We mocked the anti-pot PSAs when we were kids, and today's kids do the same. Remember, the people I saw texting the other day weren't teenagers. They were grown.
What we need is jail time, immediately, for texters who drive.
And not home-monitoring time like some politician's kid might get. No, I'm talking real into-the-cells-with-barbarians time, or out-on-a-work-farm time, under the sun with other stupid barbarians behind the barbed wire.
Some might think my use of the word "barbarian" is rude, perhaps even stupid. But only a stupid barbarian would operate a motor vehicle and not watch the road and turn that car or truck into a deadly weapon.
Reasonable arguments don't work on stupid criminals. That's the thing about criminals. They're not usually evil geniuses with cultured British or German accents and a love of opera, poetry and fine wine, petting white Persian cats.
They're usually stupid brutes who are afraid of going to jail. And that fear may stop them.
Now some other stupid barbarians — and again, I've been a member of that tribe — are afraid they'll miss that next incoming text. They reach for the phone with one hand on the wheel. And as they look down, the school bus door opens and the children run for home.
jskass@tribune.com Twitter @John_Kass
