So you think you can drive?

Texting while you drive.. how safe is it?

I am the first to accept that I have a hard time multitasking. My son can testify for that! Very often as I am typing away to oblivion he has to scream into my ear a dozen times before he can get my attention!! And then he plays on the guilt to milk some rewards! But that for another day.. back to the multi tasking! I have a hard enough time managing to watch the road, watch my back and sides, not to mention sing along to the radio and answer the million questions my son has to ask just then! I am not sure if it is a good thing that he keeps watching all the signs on the road and narrating it to me? What exactly is he hinting at? That mommy can’t do that too, or that mommy can’t read?

Anyway, amidst all this multitasking, I do manage to get to the destination eventually.. even if by then I have an acute pressure in my head and neck. I think its all the lessons my dad gave me in defensive driving. Now I am paranoid that every driver out there is about to make a mistake and I am watching every car on the road with intense suspicion! The other day while at this stake out, my phone rang .. gasp! What was I going to do now? Do I dare take my eyes off the road to pick that up? Thankfully the speaker came on and saved my day! Well I know I exaggerate, but then you never can be too careful can you?

I have had the audacity to sip a soda while I drove. I have occasionally had to eat a snack too.. however I am amazed to see the things some people do when they drive.

• Putting on their makeup – I once saw this lady mascara in hand working on her makeup while she was driving
• Guys are not safe either.. there are some that actually shave when they drive!
• Reading the newspaper/book  – One time I was interviewed by this lady when she was driving. she was looking at my resume and reading outfrom it and I heard rustling of papers as she tried to figure out why she had picked up the first page of my resume and the second page of some internal document from the printer as she rushed out from work. Needless to say I was hyperventilating, even if she seemed unconcerned!
• Painting toe nails – No I am not kidding you!
• Turning around in the seat to fumble in a bag
• Turn around again to hand that something to the kid in the seat behind!
• Fumble around in an address book for a telephone number
• Fumble around with your phone to find something which I presume is absolutely important!
• Talk on the phone
• And the newest addition to this Texting!

Trust me, when I saw the guy in the rear view mirror frantically typing in his PDA the other day I froze in my seat! Thankfully I recovered enough to take off and get out of the guy’s way fast before he bumped into me! How anyone can manage to text while driving is simply beyond me. Even if I was good at multi tasking, I am sure I could never be good at this one!

I was watching this program on TV the other day and the presenter tried to drive when he was texting. To text, he took his eyes off the road for a full 5 seconds. Seems like such a short time right? Wrong.. in that time if you were driving at 55 mph you would have covered the distance of a football field without looking up once! Virginia Tech Transportation Institute conducted a study on this and recommends banning texting for drivers of all moving vehicles. It also recommends that newly licensed teen drivers should be banned all cell phone use. For Cell phone use, it goes on to recommend use of a true hands free device such as a voice activated system for other drivers. Read the complete article here http://www.vtti.vt.edu/PDF/7-22-09-VTTI-Press_Release_Cell_phones_and_Driver_Distraction.pdf

So what is your take on texting while you drive? Do you do it? If you do what motivates you?

Posted by WNV Headline News on October 20, 2009. Filed under WorldNewsVine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.