In the middle of the interview he gives a figure, that (IIRC) 26,000 people die every year in the US because a car driver was unquestionably multitasking. You can imagine how many more are unproven. And the driver doesn’t have to be texting or talking on a phone: he opens the article with a story about how he was driving and heard the tone that told him his girlfriend had sent him a camera-phone picture, probably of herself topless. While fishing around for the phone, he drove off an embankment and almost killed himself.

I was going to post this comment this morning, but I figured I should listen to the interview before linking to it. I started to listen to it while stretching, reading Streetsblog and composing my comment in my head, and then I realized how crazy it sounded in the context of the interview. Instead I waited until I got home, downloaded the MP3 to a standalone player and went and sat in the dark and listened to the thing. I did ice my sore muscles and pet the cat while listening, but that was it.

Also by coincidence, as I was finishing the Atlantic article on the train this afternoon, a woman sitting across from me was reading a Walter Kirn novel. I’d never heard of him before yesterday.