That’s life:  Reading while driving may be hazardous to your health

The recently announced AAA Carolinas billboard campaign to “educate motorists about distracted driving” is hilarious ... at least to my way of thinking.

We have distracted drivers. We are distracted drivers.

We text. We talk. We do our make up. We change the CD player. We watch movies. We pause at a stoplight and fail to yield while looking in the backseat at a toddler.

We light cigarettes and speed past “speed checked by detection devices” signs, and now, to educate us about being distracted, AAA has launched a billboard campaign.

I’m just wondering, if I’m reading a billboard, does that make me more distracted than ever?

According to a press release by Tom Crosby, president of AAA Carolinas’ Traffic Safety Foundation, “... Drivers will now see billboards with the ads illustrating the dangers of using cell phones and texting including crashes and-or death.” Crosby added, “Driving while distracted can affect a driver’s perception, judgment and action.”

Okay, let’s get real.

If the billboard is on a street with a 30 mph speed limit, maybe you can get a little reading done, but if it’s posted by the edge of a 55 mph or more thoroughfare, where you and a dozen or more of your closest commuting buddies are whizzing by to get to wherever by whenever, and you take your eyes, gasp, off the road to get a glimpse of the sign, gasp, aren’t you just a little, beep beep, what did that thing say, oops let me get back in my lane, distracted?

Not to totally downplay the effect that driving while chit chatting is having on our roadways. It is a danger to text and talk and drive and do anything but pay attention.

And I do applaud AAA’s efforts to call attention to distracted driving.  For me, though, I’m more likely to be distracted on Interstate 95, of course heading south, when i pass a mini van with Shrek playing on the DVD. There I am craning my neck to look out my front window and through your back window, and oops, I didn’t mean to nudge your bumper like that! I love that movie, any of the three ... but I digress.

According to the press release, “Eight out of 10 drivers rated distracted driving as a serious problem, but 53 percent of them admitted they had talked on their cell phone while driving in the past 30 days and 14 percent admitted they had read or sent a text message in the past 30 days, according to the 2008 AAA Traffic Safety Culture Index.”

And making my point for me, the press release said “The graphics used in the billboard campaign are designed to get your attention—and make you think twice—before using a cell phone when you are driving.” And I checked out the billboards online. The graphics are compelling.

Let’s hope they are well-placed billboards, near parking lots and not roadways. I don’t need any more distractions while driving.