Song Captures Perils of Driving and Using the Phone
Rare is the Southern California motorist who hasn’t been frustrated by the wobbly wanderings and dangerous inattention of a cell phone-using driver in the next lane.
We usually vent our spleen in verbiage too colorful for these pages.
But a fellow automotive scribe -- Tom Murphy, senior editor of Ward’s AutoWorld magazine and an accomplished guitarist and songwriter for a Detroit-area band, the Exhaust Tones -- has written a mostly printable anthem for those of us who wish cell phone use while driving would be punishable by banishment to the Iraqi desert, at least. Here are some of the lyrics.
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“Hang Up and Drive”
Well I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.
[It’s] not a fine sight to see.
That girl in the Ford and the light she ignored.
She ran into a big RV.
She was talking on the phone with a doctor she knows.
She was making a date, and now it must be fate.
She’s gonna see him right away, in emergency today.
She won’t have much to say.
Hang up and drive. Hang up and drive.
I’m on my way back home and I wanna make it there alive.
If you gotta make a call, do a favor for us all.
You better get right off of the road or else hang up and drive.
Driving on the freeway’s a pain
‘cuz of people on their cell phones in the fast lane.
How I miss that golden age
When we didn’t have all of this road rage.
There oughta be a law with no bail.
Drive while you dial, go to jail.
But the legislators won’t, ‘cuz they need their cell phones
On the campaign trail.
Hang up and drive. Hang up and drive.
I wanna bring my kids -- bring ‘em home alive.
If you can chew gum and walk
don’t mean you can drive and talk.
You better get right off of the road or else hang up and drive.
Hang up and drive. Hang up and drive.
