You know when you’re waiting behind other cars to make a left turn at a traffic light but the pokey driver ahead of you is so inattentive (On their cell phone? Daydreaming? Shaving? Taking a nap?) that you end up having to sit through another red light? Shouldn’t there be a word for those selfish drivers? What about left-lane losers? Or light hogs? Maybe lanesquatters? A listener in La Jolla, California, believes that naming this phenomenon will be the first step to ending it. This is part of a complete episode.
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Light-balker
My thought on this might apply more broadly, i.e. to anyone who loses track of what’s going on around them (and therefore holds up traffic, walks into a light pole, falls into a fountain, whatever) because they are texting:
Numb-thumbs
May also be useful in a verb form, “numb-thumbing,” refering to the action (or lack thereof) of not doing something because they are too busy texting. A person who makes a regular habit of doing this might be a “numb-thumber.” Et cetera.
(Without the dash, this also loosely fits with the earlier segment about rhyming two-word phrases…)
My only concern is that this may be confused with someone who incurs a repetitive stress injury from too much texting. But maybe even that is appropriate: they are so busy texting that they don’t realize they are hurting themselves. Total numb-thumbers.
How about “Light Sleepers!”