Texting while driving is for amateurs

July 28, 2009

Really? People can’t drive a car while text-messaging, because it’s distracting, and it might be as dangerous as driving drunk?

I don’t buy it. First, because I’ve driven drunk, years ago, in my reckless and stupid youth, and I don’t remember being able to be sober most of the ride home, and then decide to only be drunk at stoplights. 

Yeah, I text while I drive. At stoplights, and when I’m stuck in traffic, and when I’m sitting in a parking spot. I will occasionally look at a text while I drive.

But honestly, as anyone with kids will tell you, texting is NOT the problem. You know what is?

1. Trying to retrieve a baby’s pacifier from the back seat floor, two inches beyond your grasp, while said baby screams and gasps for air because he’s so mad he lost the damned thing.

2. Baby seats that face backward, forcing you to be a contortionist while you drive to make sure the baby’s breathing/hasn’t choked/still has said pacifier/is asleep.

3. DVD players that are set up three inches beyond your grasp in the back seat, forcing you to eject/retrieve/insert a movie while doing above said contortions, while mediating a fight about which movie it will be and finding the DVD holder and cleaning off the smudges from the movie. Then the movie’s got scratches, and it won’t work, and you need to repeat above, still negotiating which movie will be played.

4. Handing out drinks and fries while moving, then opening ketchup with your teeth, handing it all the way back, and then collecting the garbage (and DON’T TELL ME you haven’t done this if you have kids in the back seat....)

5. Trying to call the doctor on the way to the ER while your toddler is in the back wailing and either barfing, bleeding or bent over in pain, while your husband yells at the other assorted children in the car.

6. Making out with a new boyfriend while driving. It’s been awhile, but let me tell you, it’s WAY more of a challenge than a text message. And don’t tell me you’ve never done that, either.

7. Eating a hamburger, holding a drink and answering the phone. Judging from the freeways, everyone does this.

8. Fighting with your husband over the latest phone bill/electric bill/issue-that-you’re-fighting-about-that-month. It’s way more stressful than sending a text, and believe me, if you can’t remember the drive home because you were too busy defending your point, you weren’t paying attention to the road.

9. Cats, dogs or guinea pigs in the car. Or a new box of chickens from the store. Or a rooster who won’t stop crowing.

10. Driving cross-country when you have the flu with an autistic toddler in the back who nurses every two hours and has a complete terror of the dark.

Texting? It’s at the bottom of my list.

Do I do it? Not really. Once in a while. Mostly at stoplights.

But if you’re going to outlaw texting, then rear-facing carseats, kids, husbands, handjobs and French fries while driving have to be outlawed, too.

That ought to make the roads a little safer.