Radley Balko wrote on his blog, The Agitator:
I'm trying to figure out how the photo for this NY Times scare story on distracted driving was taken. I can't really conceive of a scenario where it wasn't staged. Which means the caption is misleading. Also, who does this? I've never been in a car where the driver asked the passenger to hold the wheel so he could use both hands to send a text message. Does this actually happen?
It's a good question. What *did* the photographer talk about with the kids in the car?
UPDATE: PDN Pulse asked the photographer, Dan Gill, about the photo. He says he took it last year when the NYT assigned him to hang around with a group of teenagers. He didn't stage the photo, he says.
"In the course of doing the story in which I was hanging out with or shadowing three high school students I made the picture.
"I met them at their high school after classes and spent the evening with them. I told them I would be with them but to forget I was there. It did not take them long for them to forget I was there. We rode from school to one of their houses and down an inter belt highway. The driver was constantly texting 'his girls' throughout our travels. At one point on the eight-lane inter belt either the driver suggested his friend hold the wheel or his friend suggested it…and they did it.
"Were we safe? Probably not…. As journalists, we are not here to judge or to direct, but only to observe and tell the story."
