Drivers Gone Wild
Perhaps the most outlandish documented example of multitasking while driving comes from research conducted by Nationwide Insurance in 2007: A respondent from San Antonio, Texas, admitted to having shaved her legs, eaten a taco, applied makeup and consumed an alcoholic beverage all at the same time. Against the odds, she lived to tell her story.

i've seen this. another one i've seen was an overweight lady eating b-day cake. how did i know it was b-day cake? it had a freaking candle in it.

i don't pay attention to what drivers are doing when i'm biking since i need my 6 senses for the road.

i tend to be a competitive biker, so speed is the limit.

but in one of the many occasions in a red light, there were this couple (originally i though it was just a guy in his car) playing the popsicle game, didn't see the woman until later

You could legally drink and drive when I lived in Texas in the mid 80's, and I bet a lot of folks down there didn't stop drinking and driving when it became illegal.

I wasn't biking at the time, but when driving to one of our remote sites for some after-hours work I was passed on the freeway by a guy driving along at 75mph who was playing a first-person shooter on a laptop computer.

Very common here is people watching their TV on the navi system. Really frigs me off that one does. Drivers reading their manga and a guy exercising with small dumbbells. Then all the usual phone, eating and shaving stuff as well.

edit.

holy cow the exercise one may be common. just read it in the link above on drivers gone wild

Today I saw something new.
I was passed by a car, and a passenger was hanging out of the window, yelling "You can't ride your bike here, idiot!" in a cracked teenage voice, when the door he was hanging out of opened.

Ooops.

Quick reflexes allowed him to hang on to the door, despite the fact that the driver stepped on the brakes, making the door open even wider. When the driver realized that braking didn't help, he let go of the brakes, and finally succeded in wrestling his buddy back inside again, simultaniously avoiding a frontal collision with an oncoming car.
The whole thing lasted ten seconds at the most, and the guy clinging to the door never touched the road.

I'm quite happy that I'm not a teenager any more :-)

I go with a light rub of the fingertips, just enough to make it clear that they are so close I can literally reach out and touch them. I figure they will keep their distance the next time the encounter a bike so as to avoid having their precious car touched by an icky cyclist.

Woman trying to style her hair in the car, and using a lighter to dry it faster.

Saw a guy playing a guitar on the freeway. The neck of the guitar was sticking out the driver's window. He was using both hands, and it went on for about 10 miles. Yikes.

I've also seen a drummer in a van literally drumming with both drumsticks on electronic drum pads on his dashboard -- on the freeway. Yes, this takes both hands as well.

Makes me wonder if they're all part of an "on the road" band...

Many years ago I was driving when a convertible passed me with her top off going about 90mph. I mean, the car was going 90mph and the passenger was topless, standing up on the car seat and jumping around.

It seemed pretty unsafe since she was wearing no seatbelt and probably no sunscreen. I wonder why the driver was in such a hurry? He seemed remarkably focused on the road.



I do confess to changing from my work clothes into my soccer goalie outfit trying to drive to a game on time. There were lots of red lights on my route.

I saw someone focusing and paying attention yesterday. Suprised the hell out of me.

the country needs to get serious about disabling mobile cellular or broadband wireless in vehicles. the technology is out there.

people watching television on their cellphones, people texting are a hazard to others on the road.

i see people doing this (texting or watching something on their phones) daily.

Back in the day (1978 to be more accurate), I was hitchhiking in France. A girl picked me up (times change don't they? Anyway it started off with me playing guitar... When it was her "turn" she got her classical flute out... I did the steering and the gearstick from the passenger side while she kept her feet on the peddles all the way to Paris... 'though we did STOP on the way to have a picnic and play together (couldn't work out how to do that otherwise)... Ah Dominique! ><

which reminds me of the three students arrested for drunk driving... 'though NONE of them was in the driving seat... One guy in the passenger seat doing the peddles and gears, another guy in the back stretching his arms to steer, and the guy who owned the car (and the only one with a license) passed out in the other backseat... They all got busted, vainly claiming that there was no driver to be guilty of drunk driving...

I had a coworker tell me once that he played his electronic keyboard while driving...

I saw someone swerving in a van in front of me while I was driving and coming around a sharp on-ramp... when we merged onto the freeway and I pulled beside her, I saw that she was talking on a cell phone in her right hand, and flicking the ashes from a cigarette with her left hand...

Guy with his knee on the steering wheel, with a laptop set up in the middle between the seats, typing away, occasionally glancing up at the road.

I just let him get as far ahead of me as possible. I didn't need that coming up behind me.

While crossing on the ped/bike marked crosswalk once I had the green, a car rolled slowly forward, and forward, forward until it fully blocked my line of travel. Car ended up completely blocking the crosswalk as I stopped and watched. Once it stopped, I leaned forward and knocked on the passenger side window, "knock-knock." The girl (high school? College?) jumped out of her skin, nearly dropping her phone into which she had been texting. She unrolled the window, I said, "You are completely blocking the crosswalk!" She looked at me funny for a second before realizing what she did, apologized profusely and backed up - without looking behind her, she's lucky no one was there - before I could tell her to stop texting. If I hadn't been watching vehicles I would have been squished while she texted her little heart out.

I saw a guy playing a trumpet in the drivers' seat of a Tahoe once on Central Expressway. I did a triple-take as he went by going the other way, but that's what it was.

A women reading a religious booklet. I guess Jesus was her pilot. It was not so funny though, as I had to bail off the road to keep her from hitting me at full speed.

I caught her at the next light, yelled at her and asked her to pay attention to her driving. As she drove off, she went back to reading her religious booklet.

When my daughter first got her driver's license a few years ago, I lectured her endlessly about being safe while driving... no phone... no horseplay with friends... etc. etc.

Then a couple of weeks later I was out at a restaurant with my family and we ran into an old friend of mine from college. He proceeded to tell my daughter all about the time that I took a bet to drive 2.5 hours to Athens, Georgia without touching the steering wheel with my hands or arms. He was talking about how stupid I was for doing it... until I reminded him that he was the idiot who had volunteered to ride along as my witness!!

[quote=RVD72;8836800]I think the guy drinking beer in the car is awesome (in a bad way of course)./QUOTE]

Funny how attitudes change over the years.

Thirty years ago my friends and I used to measure travelling distances in beers. A 100km drive, for instance, might be a 4 beer trip. A 160km drive might be a 6 beer trip, and so on. Of course, using seat belts was unheard of, and police radar was uncommon enough to be ignored.

Couldn't get away with that these days.

Somehow we survived.

Well, a lot of us did, anyway. Some of us didn't.

People on bikes can be doing some pretty funny stuff too. I saw one guy talking on a handheld cell phone while straight-arming a second bike with his other arm.