Lawmakers' Occasional Stupidity

This news article that I read in the morning paper got me really angry:

"Carl Kruger thinks too many pedestrians are being injured because they aren't paying attention while crossing the street. As a New York state senator from Queens, every year since 2007 he has proposed a law making the use of an electronic device while crossing the street a crime. Cross the street in a major city in New York while using your cell phone or listening to your iPod and he wants to fine you $100.
"Tuning in and tuning out can be a fatal combination on the streets of New York," Sen. Kruger said.
Kruger's bill is S1945-2011. It is one of over 4,000 bills that have been submitted in the State Assembly and State Senate so far in 2011. Only about 9 percent of submitted bills passed both houses in 2009-2010, and the governor signed about 82 percent of them into law. This bill may not have much of a chance of passing but it has a chance."

That said, Shame on State Senator Carl Kruger. He should be thrown out of Albany for wasting the taxpayers' money! This proposed law actually made me very angry.

I live in NYC and when the weather is nice I enjoy taking walks all around the city and I listen to my Sony Walkman or my XM Radio and I also pay attention to my surroundings, including looking both ways when I cross an intersection. Listening on my headphones is an activity that I enjoy very much. It would be ridiculous for me to have to stop at every intersection, take my headphones off to cross just to avoid problems with the legal system just because out of the million or two million or even more people who walk with headphones there are some idiots who don't pay attention and a few people pay for their stupidity with their lives. People should be looking both ways before heading across an intersection (I even look both ways crossing a one way street just in case there is some fool backing up without looking in a car), they can still not look even if they are not wearing headphones. That doesn't mean I should have to suffer for it. I've lived in urban areas where I am a pedestrian for almost twenty years and I've regularly used portable devices that whole time and haven't been hit by a car yet and hope not to be in the future! That's maybe hundreds of thousands or millions of intersections that I've crossed.