I've seen a lot of stupid things over the years -- I live in York, after all -- but what I saw last weekend was so spectacularly idiotic that I had to pause to determine whether I'd ever actually witnessed anything as moronic.

I mean, I've been to city council meetings and sessions of the state Legislature and a Republican National Convention, and this had to top those spectacles. And that's saying something, because at the convention, I watched Sean Hannity interview Ted Nugent.

Anyway, this sight topped that.

I was driving on Eastern Boulevard, heading to the pet store to buy a 10,000-pound bag of dog food for my two greyhounds -- five tons usually lasts Norman and Lester about a week and a half -- when I got behind a slow-moving mini-SUV, one of those Suzukis or something like that. It was in front of me, in the left lane. Another car was beside me, in the right lane, apparently afraid to pass the Suzuki or whatever because that driver was having trouble staying in his lane.

We were trundling along at about 15 miles an hour, watching as this car in front of us was toddling along. It would occasionally speed up to 20 or maybe 25, and then the brake lights would come on and the car would revert to mall-walker speed.

I figured the driver was an elderly person, disoriented and confused and afraid to go fast because they were, well, old. Or perhaps the driver was smashed, an unlikely thing at 11 a.m. on a Saturday, but for some people, that's a lifestyle.

Either

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way, I gave the car a wide berth, hanging far back just in case the driver took out a street sign or stopped suddenly or ran over the median and ruined someone's day.

We approached the traffic light at Kingston Road. I got in the left lane to turn. The mini-SUV was going straight. I glanced over and that's when I saw it -- the stupidest act by a human I've ever seen.

The driver was a young male. He was holding his cell phone in both hands, leaning on the steering wheel. He was typing.

I had just witnessed texting while driving.

I had heard of it. But I never thought anyone was stupid enough to do it. Sure, I've seen people reading while driving. I've seen women putting on makeup. I can't drive anywhere without seeing people having in-depth conversations on their telephones while driving. And, like many of you, I'd read about the tragic death of Northern York County Police Officer David Tome, who, while investigating a car accident, was killed by a driver who allegedly was using a cell phone and putting on makeup.

But I've never personally seen anyone texting while driving.

Idiotic.

Yet, it's still legal in Pennsylvania because legislators say they don't want to tell people what to do. At least that's what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported recently. Fine, legislators, if you don't want to tell me what to do, make it legal for me to drag people who text while they drive out of their cars and crush them with a five-ton bag of dog food.

The Post-Gazette story about texting quoted Carnegie Mellon University psychology professor Marcel Just, "who has done brain imaging research showing that just listening to a cell phone conversation reduces the amount of brain activity dedicated to driving by 30 percent."

Just told the newspaper that texting is "even worse, much worse than using a cell phone. You don't really need research to show that texting is a very bad thing to do. It's a horrible risk to be taking."

It's pretty obvious. A New York Times/CBS News poll released Sunday found that 97 percent of those polled believed texting while driving should be illegal.

Ninety-seven percent.

You can't get 97 percent of the people in the country to agree that the sun rises in the east, but they agree on this.

And another indication of how bad it is comes from that yardstick of American behavior, the ripped-from-the-headlines stories told on "Law & Order."

This week's episode focused on the murder of the founder and CEO of a company that makes skintight clothing for wan urbanites, a company that sells $5 T-shirts for $40. The detectives suspect the killer is one of the guy's former employees, suing the boss for sexual harassment -- a plot-line ripped from the headlines surrounding American Apparel and its founder, Dov Charney, who, The New York Times reports, has been the subject of multiple sexual harassment suits.

But it turns out to be something else.

The detectives learn that a Web site had posted a photo of the dead guy texting while driving, suggesting that he should be killed before he kills someone.

So someone kills the guy.

For texting while driving.

It's that dangerous.


Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.inyork.com/ydr -- click on the opinion section -- or visit his blog at www.mikeargento.com

Bill failed

State Rep. Eugene DePasquale, D-West Manchester Township, has been pushing for a state law to ban texting while driving. His efforts, though, failed this year, coming up five votes short of passage in the state House in April.