Yahoo – Avid texters beware: Fort Lee, N.J. police said they will begin issuing $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who are caught texting while walking. “It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware,” said Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department. Ripoli said the borough, which is home to approximately 35,000 residents, has suffered three fatal pedestrian-involved accidents this year. He hopes his crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking will make his town safer, but not everyone is on board with the idea of issuing $85 tickets. “When I walk I still look around. I’m not like constantly looking down the whole time,” said resident Sue Choe. Another woman complained about the tickets were “a lot of money.”  Officers handed out pamphlets during a short grace period in March before they began aggressively going after “dangerous walkers.” More than 117 tickets have been issued, according to the New Jersey Record. Two professors at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a study on walking and texting. They found texters are 60 percent more likely to veer off line than non-texters. “We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting,” Eric Lamberg, co-author of the study, told Long Island Business News. “Texting disrupts your ability much more than does talking.”

I’m a firm believer that there’s a few things in this world that we need to police ourselves. Not everything can be subject to the law in order to make sure it remains safe. One of those things is fucking walking. If the human race can’t be trusted to be able to fucking walk around while multitasking without police intervention then I think we’re doomed as a species.

But that being said, if we’re gonna starting ticketing people for texting and walking then we’re better start ticketing assholes who can’t walk for everything that they do. I want a law on the books that says if two people walking towards each other are on a collision and you step left to avoid a crash, then you should go to prison for 1-3 years. Its just inexplicable to go left. We’re in America. Pretty much every rule of every mode of transportation is to stay to the right. If you go left and I go right now we’re doing that stupid stutter step dance and both people panic and end up over thinking whether the next move should be left or right and then everything is fucked. If you go left you go to jail. Period.

If you’re on a crowded sidewalk and you stop, it should be vigilante law and you should be able to make a citizens arrest. Just punch that person right in the side of their head and hold them down on the sidewalk. Send them to prison. If you’re walking with your girlfriend or boyfriend and you’re walking with your arms around each other, prison. If you’re out with your baby who’s just learning to walk and you are holding their hand while they stumble around and you’re pushing an empty stroller with the other hand while people behind you are getting backed up because your kid with the dump in his pants can’t walk, prison. Put your fucking kid in the stroller.

The list goes on and on. But I’d like to have enough faith in the human race that they can keep their head on a swivel and employ the “look up after typing each word” technique without police enforcement.