Thursday, April 28, 2011

driving without distractions

The other day I caught myself opening a cheese stick and reaching back to give it to my 21-month old - while I was driving.  The riskiest part of the act was the effort required by both of my hands to peel back to top of the cheese stick packaging.  I was driving on a major road at about 40 mph.  I suddenly imagined what could have happened if my left hand, which was steadying the steering wheel, had been thrown off balance just a bit had I jerked it just a little while I struggled to open the wrapper.  I was horrified and vowed to never open another cheese stick again while driving, and to try to avoid doing anything while driving - but driving.

This is hard - really hard - with little kids.  They constantly need something while they are sitting there, locked in securely and feeling most likely quite bored.

This is an interesting article: Keeping Eyes on Distracted Driving's Toll. Reading it made me even more determined to completely focus on my driving and ignore any possible distractions.  One of the links in the article contains multiple stories of people killed by distracted drivers: http://distraction.gov/faces/.  It is so sad.

It only takes one little slip.

2 comments:

amanda said...

So true! I think we actually get used to distraction when we are around kids a lot, but it is so bad on the road.

Carrie said...

I am so so so bad about this! Thanks for the reminder, and what a great article.