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Driving + Anything
Else = Boom!
by Mad Dog
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Practice
dialing a cell phone blindfolded. Put Braille labels on your CDs so you
can identify them by touch without taking your eyes off the road. Your
life could depend on it. |
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A study just released by
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (motto: “If you
have to have an accident, please do it on surface streets”) has found
that multitasking drivers are three times as likely to be involved in a
crash as motorists who are paying attention. In other words, putting on
makeup, searching for the half-eaten burrito that rolled under the seat
last week, talking on a cell phone, and changing your pants while you
drive are distracting and dangerous. To this I have to add: Duh!
It turns out that nearly 80 percent
of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes happen within three seconds of
the driver being distracted. This means that either you should stop
being distracted or accomplish them faster. Learn to change a diaper
one-handed while reaching into the back seat in 2.3 seconds. Practice
dialing a cell phone blindfolded. Put Braille labels on your CDs so you
can identify them by touch without taking your eyes off the road. Your
life could depend on it.
(NOTE: These are personal
recommendations only, and should not be confused with any conclusions
the NHTSA thinks they included in their report but since no one can
understand the stilted language to know if that’s what they are or
not, they might just as well have left them out and no one would have
noticed the difference.)
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During the study, drivers traveled 2 million miles and were
involved in 82 crashes and 761 near-crashes. Interestingly, these
statistics are identical to an average morning commute on the San
Francisco Bay Bridge.
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The researchers found that reaching for an object increased the
risk of a crash or near-crash by 9 times, looking at something outside
the car increased it by 3.7 times, reading by 3 times, applying makeup
by 3 times, dialing a cell phone by almost 3 times, and talking or
listening to a cell phone increased it by 1.3 times. God help you if
you’re searching the car for instructions so you can read how to put
on your make-up while you dial your cell phone. If that’s the case,
please save yourself the aggravation and just stay home and stick your
head in the oven.
To be fair, not all distractions
result in an accident, though it’s a safe bet that anytime you’re
stuck behind a slow-as-molasses “come on, people!” driver, see a car
weaving across the road like Ted Ligety’s gold medal winning slalom
run, spot an SUV that thinks the center double line means they should
straddle it, or slam on the brakes to avoid a car that zips across three
lanes of traffic to make a hasty exit from the freeway, if you pull up
close you’ll find the driver is talking on the phone. What were
people’s excuses for bad driving in the good old days? “I was busy
looking for a pay phone so I could tell someone something that wasn’t
remotely important but just couldn’t wait”? Yeah, right.
So how did the NHTSA researchers come
up with their real-life demolition derby-style data? By spending a year
observing 241 drivers tool around in 100 video and sensor-equipped cars.
While they churned out 224 fascinatingly dry pages that talk about
crashes and near crashes, they neglected to say how many instances were
recorded of nose-picking while sitting at a traffic light, DWD (Dancing
While Driving) to ABBA, or imitating Wayne and Garth imitating Queen
singing Bohemian Rhapsody. During the study, drivers traveled 2
million miles and were involved in 82 crashes and 761 near-crashes.
Interestingly, these statistics are identical to an average morning
commute on the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
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I
don’t know how many of our hard-earned tax dollars we shelled out for
this ground-breaking discovery, but you have to admire anyone who can
come up with an obvious thesis, convince people to finance the research,
then release the results with a straight face. |
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A study like this can’t come cheap. Then again, how can you put
a dollar amount on having scientific proof to back up something anyone
with a lick of sense already knows? But before you think we didn’t get
our money’s worth, the researchers made another startling discovery
— drowsy drivers are four times as likely to have a crash or
near-crash than those who are wide awake. Honest! God help our Treasury
if the government decides to do research on other obviousness, like
finding out if the sun comes up every morning, if you’ll get wet by
going out in the pouring rain without an umbrella, and whether anyone
really gives a flying Scientologist’s pacifier about Tom Cruise and
Katie Holmes. Or their
born-in-silence-thanks-to-Katie-having-an-epidural baby.
I don’t know how many of our
hard-earned tax dollars we shelled out for this ground-breaking
discovery — or how it is that Halliburton didn’t get the contract to
conduct it — but you have to admire anyone who can come up with an
obvious thesis, convince people to finance the research, then release
the results with a straight face. Hey, if budgets get tight they can
always consider a career change that will really make use of their
talents, like say tournament poker. Or President of the United States.
But all this talk about getting paid
big bucks for performing obvious research is distracting me, and
considering that I’m writing this while I drive, spread cheese on
crackers, and talk to my insurance agent about increasing my accidental
life insurance — hey, at least I’m not putting on makeup — maybe
I’d better be careful and focus on one thing at a time. Yeah, right.
©2006 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read them,
but not while driving.
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