I May NEVER TÊXT AGAIN After Reading THI$!!

התרגום של גוגל לא עזר אז קבלו את הגרסא באנגלית
מי שיכול לתרגם לנו אני אשמח להשתמש בתרגום שלו!

THE scientific literature that comes into a newspaper office is often weird, mostly wonderful and sometimes simply woeful. But on this day, the science was pointing to a worrying development in the way we humans think.

The ratio communis, a key region of the brain, was malfunctioning. Instead of fluorescing on brain scans, it flickered, grey and dull. What science was trying to work out was the link between this dead zone and gadgets. When we chat on the mobile phone, text furiously, browse the BlackBerry, or commune with our car's global positioning system (GPS), the lights go out.

So alarmed was the American College of Emergency Physicians it issued a media release, concerned at not just the bruised coming into hospital emergency rooms, but the fatalities when this key decision-making part of the brain failed.

"Don't text while you're engaged in physical activities that require sustained attention, such as biking, inline skating [rollerblading] and playing sports," the college warned.

"Never text when driving or motorcycling, and use caution even when using headsets. Texting can divert you from ensuring your own safety."

In a world where people exercise their ratio communis - roughly translated as commonsense - these statements of the bleeding obvious are not required.

Stupidity and life-threatening inattention is not confined to the citizens coming into American casualty rooms. It is alive and well here. It is the one in six drivers who regularly receive - and send - text messages while driving, according to a Telstra survey.

A call to the NSW health authorities shed no light on gadget-inspired injuries. But claims managers at the insurance company Allianz easily recalled accidents among drivers and pedestrians due to gadget inattention.

While they had nothing to compare with the inattentive truck driver who blithely followed instructions on his GPS and travelled thousands of kilometres to Britain's Gibraltar Point instead of Gibraltar, they see GPS-inspired accidents as a growing area.

In two accidents, drivers were distracted by their GPS and failed to see the red light. After one, on South Dowling Street near the airport, both the GPS-controlled car and a taxi had to be written off. The taxi's passengers and the car's driver were taken to hospital.

Then there was the case of a girl who walked onto the road, engrossed in her iPod until she was hit by a car.

In the most serious case Allianz could recall, a tourist who stepped out onto the street while talking on a mobile phone was so badly injured that she is in need of care for the rest of her life. Her potential multimillion-dollar settlement was reduced by about two-thirds because of her contributory negligence - a drastic price to pay for shutting down ratio communis.