Walking and watching

Cloquet’s Dan Lundberg and his grandson, Luke, 4, wrap up a walk that looped through Cloquet’s West End and down Cloquet and Industrial avenues. Lundberg walks roughly five miles a day through town and likes to count cars, the number of people on cell phones in those cars and number of near misses (where he is almost hit by an inattentive driver) each day. Earlier this year, he shared with the Pine Knot that out of 111 cars seen on his two walks, 57 were on their phones, and 23 of those were texting. He tracked numbers when the state’s new hands-free cell phone laws went into effect, and found 11 on Aug. 1, and the following days six, three, 11 and 14. On Wednesday, a delighted Lundberg reported he’d seen zero drivers on their phones or texting that morning. “Now I’m going to have to find something else to watch,” he said.