It’s Monday morning and I am driving along Chapman Highway. I am running slightly late so my speed is a little more increased than usual. Then it happens, my cell phone rings. I can try to answer it if I put my cup of coffee in my left hand and shove the phone under my chin. My right hand is busy holding an apple and now my left leg rises slightly to steer the wheel. I answer the phone and the voice on the other end says, “Can you talk for a minute?”
A minute is all I can do before the coffee spills and I drop the apple to grab the wheel because my leg will not navigate the curvy parts of Chapman well. I think the guy in the car behind me just swore at me. I only swerved in his lane a little bit.
Ok, none of this story is true. I know I can’t multi-task myself and drive at the same time. There are plenty of multi-tasking drivers out there. You can spot who they are by the way they drive. The truth is usually exposed when you pull up next to them. I know one lady who puts her make-up on at one light and curls her hair with a butane-cordless-curling iron at another light. She schedules her beauty regimen around the longevity of the lights. The mascara light isn’t nearly as long as the curling iron light.
She’s probably the same lady who holds up traffic because she is so busy applying her make-up that she doesn’t see when the light turns. If she can’t get her bangs to curl just right does she stay at the light longer forcing those behind her to wait or change lanes?
Some people are multi-tasking parents while they drive. My folks were famous for car discipline. They always picked the morning drive to either discipline us or tell us something. They knew we couldn’t go anywhere because we were in a moving vehicle. It’s not like being at home where you can go to your room. My mom would actually turn around, look at me, and ask me if I was listening. Forget the road, she was trying to make a point about something important, it obviously wasn’t driver safety.
My dad always liked to do periodic brake checks just to make sure we were all strapped in. He would speed up a little and then slam on the brakes. Whoever went flying forward was obviously not buckled up. I am sure that this multi-task parenting never bothered the poor drivers behind us.
I pulled up next to a lady one day, who had been driving extremely slowly, to see what had been the problem. She actually had a book open and was trying to read while she drove! I thought I had seen it all but that one floored me. I hope she was enjoying her book because being behind her was awful. She was driving 30 mph on a 55 mph limit road.
Night driving is worse. You can’t always clearly see why people do nonsensical things on the road unless, of course, they turn on their dome light. Dome lights definitely hinder nighttime vision, but they can certainly help a multi-tasking driver find that CD in the back seat or an M&M they’ve dropped on the floor.
Every time I see an accident the first thing I wonder is if the one, who caused the accident, was multi-tasking.
As people’s lives become more hectic our cars become our offices and substitute homes. We can’t help but multi-task in our vehicles. Car manufacturers have even begun to install televisions in the front seat. Television while you drive? How is that safer than a cell phone? I am sure I haven’t touched on all of the driving distractions multi-taskers bring to the road. I look forward to someone sharing their multi-tasking driver story with me, feel free to write editor@seymourherald.com.

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