A Deadly Wandering

A roundtable of lawyers convenes in the Cache County Attorney’s Office. Terryl is adamant about charging Reggie with a serious crime, but Baird makes counterarguments. He thinks Reggie “seem[s] like a decent kid” (223). Besides, Baird had an experience that gives him some empathy for Reggie’s situation: When Baird was 16, he was driving on his motorcycle and waved to the local mailman. His attention diverted for a second, he didn’t notice a young boy dart out into the road and hit him at full speed.

In the end, the county attorney decides to side with Baird, but tells Terryl if she can find a prosecutor willing to take on more aggressive charges, they’ll pursue it. Terryl goes to Don Linton, a well-known county lawyer. He doesn’t know much about texting and driving, but while he finds no legal precedent, he does find a “scientific” precedent in Dr. David Strayer, who lives nearby and whose research shows that texting while driving was more like driving drunk than driving while drinking a Coke. Dr. Strayer, one of the only researchers in the field, operates a tiny operation, barely sustained by small grants because “In whose interest was it to discover that there was a risk to this thing that everyone loved doing, and that was one of the most culturally celebrated activities, multitasking?” (229).