April 29, 2014 — The Washington Post: “Can drivers be shamed into putting down their mobile communication devices? An associate dean at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health says it’s worth a try. And Jay A. Winsten says stand-up comedians could boost the effort. ‘A cellphone is like a magnet, and it draws our attention. Using the term addiction loosely, it really has addictive qualities,’ Winsten said at a public forum…. ‘It’s such a part of our psyche and our way of being that we’re going to have to re-position what it means when people see you talking on the phone,’ he said. You’re ‘really showing that you’re out of control, that you can’t stop, that you can’t put it down. We ought to recruit some top stand-up comedians [who are] going ridicule the behavior of not being able to put your phone down.’ Winsten was joined at the forum by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, who said it’s time to ‘shock Americans into reality about the dangers of texting while driving.'”
Read The Washington Post Dr. Gridlock blog by Ashley Halsey III
Center for Health Communication
