Slick Senator Does Zoom Meeting on Distracted Driving While Driving Distracted

During a recent public Zoom meeting which, in part, dealt with the passing of a new bill on distracted driving, Sen. Brenner was in his car. It was initially parked but he, ever the slick man, turned on a home backdrop, put his seatbelt on, and was on his merry way.

You can see a snippet of the video at the bottom of the page. Perhaps more hilarious than the fact that the meeting had, among others, the topic of the new law on distracted driving, is the fact that Sen. Brenner assumed his fake home backdrop worked in fooling anyone. Here was a man convened to discuss the possibility of harsher fines on those who use their phones while driving, doing pretty much the same thing.

To the Columbus Dispatch, Sen. Brenner denies any wrongdoing. He doesn’t say why he used the home background in the first place, if he wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he does say this: he did more than one Zoom meeting like this. Plus, he was wearing his seatbelt and was paying attention to the road.

To him, he says, doing video calls is no different than taking a phone call. “On video calls, I'm not paying attention to the video. To me, it's like a phone call,” he tells the media outlet.

Except that it’s not and he doesn’t (pay attention to the road). In this very short video below, you can see him look at the screen several times, just like he would look at a phone while texting. Which qualifies as distracted driving everywhere else, not just in Ohio.

Research has shown that checking your phone while driving keeps your eye and undivided attention for an average of 4.6 seconds. A lot of things can go bad in such a small timeframe.