Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine!
Posted on 11/12/2013 7:48:38 AM PST by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Experts say eating while driving can increase a motorist’s chances of a car accident by 80 percent.
Ryan Harrison, an editor in Burbank, said long hours at work means more time in his car.
“I’d rather just eat on the way home, so I’m killing two birds with one stone,” he said. “I would make scrambled eggs before I go to work and then I’d eat them on the way to work, and I’d also eat yogurt. It’s definitely convenience.”
With so little time and so much traffic, Los Angeles freeways have turned Harrison’s car into a personal dining room.
“There is so much traffic here that you have to drive so slowly and there are so many stop lights,” he said. “I need to eat while I’m driving just to save time.”
Officer Juan Galvan of the California Highway Patrol office in Glendale said that while Harrison’s behavior isn’t illegal, it is unsafe.
“Usually when people take a bite and if they spill, what’s your first reaction? Your first reaction is to let go of the steering wheel or drop whatever it is you’re doing because you want to clean up the mess you possibly caused,” Galvan said.
Law enforcement officials say much like texting and driving, eating also falls under the category of distracted driving.
Asked if the CHP has seen an increase in drivers who eat, Galvan said, “We did have a [Distracted Driving Awareness Month] in April. Over 10,000 enforcement contacts were made and over 240 citations were issued for an unsafe speed related to distracted driving. So, quite possibly, there could have been a good majority that were eating.”
The officer added, “We don’t have a specific section, but for somebody that is eating while driving, now we can go with the unsafe speed section. What is the safe speed for you to eat and drive? The safe speed is ‘zero.’”
Harrison said there’s more to the distracted driving debate than just taking a bite behind the wheel.
“If they make it so you can’t eat and drive, they should take away being able to put on make-up. I’m not going to be eating my hamburger if I’m trying to get across six lanes of traffic and avoid pedestrians and stuff,” he said.
Distracted drivers can be cited anywhere from $100 to $500, or even more.
Are the “experts” looking for cars to be required to have a sterile cockpit like they have by law under FAR 121 or 135?
So everyone is stupid? Cause anyone who claims not to have done something besides driving while driving is a liar.
The top 10 food offenders in a car are:
Coffee: It always finds a way out of the cup.
Hot soup: Many people drink it like coffee and run the same risks.
Tacos: “A food that can disassemble itself without much help, leaving your car looking like a salad bar,” says Hagerty.
Chili: The potential for drips and slops down the front of clothing is significant.
Hamburgers: From the grease of the burger to ketchup and mustard, it could all end up on your hands, your clothes, and the steering wheel.
Barbecued food: The same issue arises for barbecued foods as for hamburgers. The sauce may be great, but if you have to lick your fingers, the sauce will end up on whatever you touch.
Fried chicken: Another food that leaves you with greasy hands, which means constantly wiping them on something, even if it’s your shirt. It also makes the steering wheel greasy.
Jelly or cream-filled donuts: Has anyone eaten a jelly donut without some of the center oozing out? Raspberry jelly can be difficult at best to remove from material.
Soft drinks: Not only are they subject to spills, but also the carbonated kind can fizz as you’re drinking if you make sudden movements, and most of us remember cola fizz in the nose from childhood. It isn’t any more pleasant now.
Chocolate: Like greasy foods, chocolate coats the fingers as it melts against the warmth of your skin, and leaves its mark anywhere you touch. As you try to clean it off the steering wheel you’re likely to end up swerving.
Source: http://www.insure.com/car-insurance/driver-distractions.html
Reads like satire — but I think they are serious.
I saw a woman behind me at a light, eating a bowl of cereal. Spoon and everything. I would be worried about spilling the whole dang thing and having that spoiled milk smell in the car forever. She looked like an old pro at it.
Yogurt and eggs while driving? Is he actually eating with a fork/spoon? That is insane, but I don’t think it is the norm-most of us drink coffee from a covered cup, or water from a plastic bottle-but we don’t do makeup or dine in there...
“Kids cause distraction” That’s for sure-but they were certainly less of one when they were in the carseat/belted in up front where you could glance over at a stoplight and give them a word to “calm down right now, or I’ll pull over...” which always worked for me. I think it is a major hazard to have them out of sight in the back, able to get loose and into mischief...
Oh my!
What is the safe speed for you to eat and drive? The safe speed is ‘zero.’”
So Mr. Safety is advocating zero mph while eating on the interstate?
Hahahahaha...I almost wrecked my car one night driving home from work.
A spider decided to lower himself down right in front of my face.
Probably two inches in front of my face.
Now, I had an experience when I was six or seven where I tried to crawl through a drainage pipe under a road. I got about halfway through and it got too narrow, and I couldn’t go forward. I was stuck trying to go back, and as I tried, I turned my head and had cobwebs all over my shoulder. Caught in one of them was a big daddy long-legs. (at six, all spiders are huge) I went ballistic and began screaming...my brother climbed in after me, pulled me out by my legs, and I ran up the road, swatting at the cobwebs, but every time I looked, that daddy long-legs was still there. I was jumping in the air, twirling, swatting, and, well...it took me well into adulthood before I got pretty much over it.
That spider lowering itself overrrode my psychological defenses long enough to make me swerve my car wildly from side to side before pulling onto the shoulder where I jumped out of the car swearing up a blue streak!
I know. It is just a little spider, but good God, the damned thing surprised me...
“children sitting in the backseat that need to be backhanded for causing problems to their fellow siblings”
LMAO-you read my mind...
Second biggest distraction: stopping at Wendy’s when you have two dogs in the back seat, and they finish their bacon cheeseburgers before you finish yours.
Biggest distraction: driving anywhere, doing anything, stopping at anyplace, with three kids in the back seat.
Ask me how I know! :-(
Used to spend several hours a day on the road, so I always ate in the car. But at least I’d stop first.
The thing that ALWAYS AMAZES me is the “Law-Enforcment” Type ALWAYS lecture us about destracted driving. HAVE ANY of you seen the inside of a modern cop car/truck/suv? Talk about DETRACTED!
I love Spiders.
If I find one hanging from a single silk thread, I like to grab the thread and play “Yo-Yo” with the spider.
When I first started driving back in the 50’s I was a pretty fast driver, and the police were out to get me.
One day my mother borrowed my car and got stopped by the police for drinking a coke. They charged her with failure to pay full time and attention to her driving. She never borrowed my car again.
duh
so do blow jobs
and reaching around to swat kids
and texting
or looking at maps...does anyone but me ever do that..a big Rand on west still beats a phone
or putting on make up...girls...lol...man the reals pros can yak on the phone and have that mirror down sideways and split their brain literally...while driving down I-65
i think they grow fins too
hahaha...yeah.
Although I will say this: I NEVER, ever, text. And I will only RARELY talk on a phone, and only if I have to because I am on call and it is a patient care issue. And if I do, I am acutely aware that I am compromised. I can’t do those things, because they change the way I perceive my surroundings.
But I eat and drink with impunity.
And if I am doing something like changing a song or something like that, I stop all things I am thinking about except driving, concentrate on the sequence of tasks I have to do, assess my surroundings and do them while keeping tabs.
One upsmanship I saw a woman shaving her legs while driving - looked about mid to late 20s. She had her leg up on the dash behind the steering wheel. Nice legs and nice underwear too, but surely she could have done that before she left home.
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