I had my first minor fender bender in over a fifteen years yesterday.

Nothing serious.  Just a decent sized crack in my (plastic) bumper thanks to a guy chatting away on his cell phone instead of actually paying attention where he was sticking the backside of his $40,000 SUV.  Apparently, his phone call was so important because he did not end the call until 10 to 20 seconds after getting out of his SUV and had the audacity to give me the “give me one minute” hand gesture after exiting the vehicle.

The damage was minimal, but fairly costly, so I thought it best to report the accident to the authorities since I lease my SUV and I have a perfect driving record.   No way was I going to jeopardize a lifetime of hovering just 5 mph over the speed limit on the slim chance this blemish might show up on a future insurance report twenty years from now without proper documentation.

So while I’m sitting in the baking sun watching this guy blabber on about tomorrow’s sales calls, I couldn’t help but think if modern technology was at partially at fault for my dinged bumper (and melting ice cream).

Over and over in my head, I kept thinking about a video by Bruce McCall entitled The Ascent of Man.

[Email and RSS Readers please click to article for video]

The short animation clip really brings to light about how our high tech lifestyle could — theoretically — do more harm than good.

Think about it.

Thanks to this guy chatting away on his cell phone (e.g. not paying attention to the task at hand), I have to deal two insurance companies, wait for spare parts to arrive, waste time at the dealership for the parts to be installed, etc.  He will almost certainly be facing higher insurance premiums since he admitted to causing multiple accidents in the last few years and has a few points on his drivers license.

So thanks to a few seconds of bad judgment, this guy costs me a few hours of my life dealing with repairs and he will be out a few thousand dollars (or more) over the course of his life.

Of course, all technologies have their pros and cons, but there reaches a point when sometimes you just have to say enough is enough when trying to integrate modern technology into your everyday routine.  After a while, the incoming stimuli becomes too much to handle and you just have to unplug.  Otherwise, the negative results outweigh the benefits.

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