Did you know that the average time a driver looks away from the road while texting is 5 seconds? Yup, enough time to take you and me into a very happy place. Well, at least me. If I'm lucky enough to die instead of getting crippled.
Texting is a relatively new driving hazard. How new? My spell check underlined texting and gave me the following options: testing - exiting - taxing - jesting and tasting. To remember my options I've come up with the following sentence.
While testing a young lady and exiting the freeway we slammed on our brakes to avoid a driver who while texting cut us off, taxing our ability to keep jesting and tasting life to it's fullest.
A much older obstacle to safe driving is the behaviour I noticed yesterday. I'm sitting at a corner and the car passing in front of me appears to be driven by a big shaggy dog, paws on the steering wheel, happy face looking out the open driver side window. I say appears because I never actually saw the stupid human who must at least be working the gas and brake. There was no way he could have seen me.
Feline lovers at least keep their driving buddies out of sight, one hand on the wheel, the other rubbing the furry beast. I think this is more the choice of the cat. They don't like wind, they don't look happy but sometimes they do want to know what's going on so they sit in the back window, creeping me out as they stare at me.
One of the latest fashions for people who wear glasses are frames with these very wide side brackets. They look nice but like the idiot with the dog on his lap the glasses offer no peripheral vision. At least these fashionistas (machinists in my spell check) can learn to move their head to compensate and don't have to worry about what will happen to their lap if a dog gets frightened or a cat gets frisky.
I won't bore you with statistics concerning gory death and cell phone while driving usage. Do you really care? Does the average person think, "Oh, this may end my life. It would be wise to pull over and talk." I would say that maybe 20% of people that come in for road tests between the ages of 18 and 24 actually keep their iPhone on their lap when driving, ON THE ROAD TEST! They don't use it but you know this is their life.
I bet when they leave me they have one hand on the wheel, one thumb changing screens and doing all the other stuff I wouldn't know because I don't have an iPhone. This prompts an interesting thought. Your driving attention while you are on your cell phone is maybe 50% and theirs is at 10%. What are your odds of finding that happy place?
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