OLD BLASTARD: Cagers + cell phones = @#$%

How many times have you looked over and seen this? For the record, this guy was using his phone while stopped at the light.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

WTF.

What the F#$K!

None of those phrases popped into my head as I slowed the Blast at the constricted, bottleneck of a four-way stop in a C'ville residential neighborhood. I just felt a sinking emotion, the pure, internal, chi-driven energy of knowing that I'm about to be creamed like corn in a can, except I'm not driving a can.

With a hedgerow to the left of me and a wall to the right, I was stuck in the middle  with a joker in a white subcompact car turning right, taking up all of my narrow roadway and leaving me no place to go but down. Worse, the joker didn't see me because she held her cell phone straight up above the wheel like she was sighting me in, apparently texting someone that she was planning on killing a motorcyclist.

She looked away from her phone in time to avoid me as I stood stopped in my lane.

It would have been just a head-shaking what-a-moron moment if it had been the only time yesterday that some shipdit had tried to kill me while talking to their broker or texting their lover. It wasn't. It was already the third time and there was one more to go.

Distracted driving is rampant. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration,  an organization that is not always a friend to riders. 20 percent of injury wrecks in 2009 included episodes of texting, eating, talking on the phone, changing the CD, recalculating routes on GPS, touching ones self in inappropriate places and other sorts of distracted driving.

About 18 percent of the 5,474 distracted driving fatalities in 2009 -- 995 -- involved cell phone use.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety -- seldom a friend to riders -- drivers with hand held communications devices are four times more likely to smash up themselves and others.

According to the University of Utah -- their friendliness is always in doubt -- cell phone use while driving, whether hands free or hand held, is the equivalent to driving with a .08 blood alcohol content without the joy of having the alcohol.

I agree 100 percent and don't ask me how I know that. Never mind, I'll tell you anyway.

It started with a brisk morning ride to work, turning right from Hydraulic Road onto U.S. 29 with an SUV in the lane to my right. We're cruising around when I get this funny feeling and lay off the throttle just as the SUV makes a quick dodge into my lane.

I lay on the mighty Blast horn, "geek-geek-geek" it shouts like an angry 3-year-old, and the SUV swerves all a-sudden back into its lane, the driver giving a sheepish look and wave while still conversing on the phone held to his left ear.

Hey, it's all good. No harm, no foul.

Until an hour later at the intersection of U.S. 29 and Rio Road and I'm in the far left of the left turn lanes going from Seminole Trail toward East Rio. That's when the slant-headed Neanderthal in the Acura next to me tries to pull a quick U-turn across my lane.

"Geeeeeeeeeeek" the Blast shouts and the guy stares at me like Scotty just beamed me down while he continues chatting away.

Then, on a quick lunch break, the idiot in the subcompact tried to take me out. There was one more near the end of the day involving a pinhead in a BMW screaming out of a pizzeria parking lot and offering to change my lane for me, but I saw him coming in advance and got out of the way.

Which all goes to prove that...

Well, it proves nothing except they are all out to get us and that, when you're on two wheels or sitting over four, you are in charge of protecting yourself.

Be careful out there.