If you’re behind the wheel, should you also be behind a cheeseburger?
In Atlanta traffic, eating while driving seems to be the least of our sins – not when you see men with electric shavers (where do the little whisker bits go, anyway?) or women with mascara wands or idiots sending text messages at 80 mph.
Even so, an Alabama man is due in Cobb County State Court on Feb. 3 to answer to the offense of failing to “exercise due care” on the road. The report adds, in the remarks section: “Eating while driving” but provides no other details of the alleged offense.
Harris Madison Turner, who lives in Spanish Fort, Ala., was cited at 3:41 p.m. on Jan. 10 for eating a cheeseburger while driving his 2009 BMW i351 on Canton Road. The incident report says traffic was heavy but skies were clear and roads were dry.
Dr. Alex Gross, a Dunwoody dermatologist, has mixed feelings about Turner’s citation.
Gross, 55, was driving his older-model BMW convertible down Peachtree-Dunwoody Road 10 years ago when it was T-boned by a driver who ran a red light while unwrapping an Arby’s roast beef sandwich.
Gross’s Beemer was virtually totaled, although Gross was not. He did suffer a torn ligament in his hand that meant he couldn’t operate on patients for a couple of months. And though he’s still surprised that he walked away from the accident, he’s not sure he’d totally outlaw eating while driving.
“Would I be in favor of a law where you can’t eat at all? No,” Gross said. “But people should be paying attention when they’re driving. It is the same as texting while driving. I sympathize more with the police.
“If the police thought he was a hazard because he was eating, I agree with them. By all means, they need to protect the public safety. “
You won’t be surprised to learn that traffic safety advocates frown on eating, drinking, texting, phoning, primping while driving.
“You’re in the car to drive. That should be your focus,” said Jerry Lee, deputy state coordinator for AARP Driver Safety.
As the message signs on the interstates constantly remind us, you’re 23 times more likely to get into an accident if you text while driving; if you drink and drive, you’re 10 times more likely to get into an accident; and if you talk on the phone, you’re four times more likely, said Lee, citing National Safety Council statistics.
As for scarfing down a cheeseburger while driving 55?
“Food would have to be fairly high because you’re distracted,” Lee said. “It’s not safe.”
Even so, Lee said he does drink coffee when he drives, though he doesn’t snack.
“To me it doesn’t seem to be distracting,” Lee said.
In the road safety classes he teaches, Lee has heard a little bit of everything from his students, who say they’ve seen people change clothes while barreling down the freeway or talking on the phone so intently that they’ve slowed the flow of traffic in their lane to a crawl.
“Recently on a trip back from Florida, I was driving and a lady passed me on the right, and I know she had to have been going fast because I was driving the speed limit, but she was reading texts,” Lee said. “Reading texts as she was speeding along at more than 70 miles an hour.”
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