Except, in this case, I'm the driver and I'm driving my kids to school, running late for work and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm expecting an important email and need to check my calendar to see what time I need to be at my first meeting of the day.
Sound familiar? Many of us are taking our busy lives into our car journeys and attempting to complete tasks that should be left at home or dealt with on arrival at work - and the results are frankly frightening. How often do you STILL see people on their phones whilst driving despite the higher penalties that are handed out when caught. Styling hair, rummaging around in bags - I've even seen people eating from cereal bowls whilst driving their vehicles.
Many people seem to believe that they are somehow completely capable of focusing on the road and what's happening around them whilst carrying out one or more of the above. Which has serious implications for other road users including cyclists and pedestrians and results daily in accidents and life changing events for those caught up in situations where people simply aren't paying full attention.
I've no idea what the answer is here - stiffer penalties may work in some circumstances - but I think there's a wider issue. People just don't think that these activities are actually distractions. It ties in with everyone's personal belief that actually they are a brilliant driver and that it's always someone else's fault when accidents happen. Of course accidents will always happen - that's their very nature - but it's down to all of us to minimise the chances of them happening by taking the best possible care when driving a vehicle.
The poll of more than 2,300 people by road safety charity IAM RoadSmart found the three most frequently observed activities are smoking, eating and drinking – all of which have been observed by more than 95% of those surveyed. But ‘telling off children’ and ‘styling hair’ were also high in the charts, with this being witnessed by 82% and 55% of responders respectively. And a total of 63% of those surveyed had seen a driver look at a laptop or tablet screen.
Read the original article here