Doggedly Distracted?

This article (soul-sucking registration required) in today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram mentions a survey in which 11% of drivers who participated said they’d been distracted by a dog jumping around in the car.  My “uh oh, here comes another law” sense was twitching as I read the article, because these kinds of articles are usually spawned by a press release issued by some do-gooder organization that wants to ban something or other.  In this case, the survey was commissioned by “Response Insurance,” who I’ll bet will be pushing a new law in the next year or so.

The full results of the survey were included, which I have captured here:

driver_distractions.jpg

I was particularly appalled at item #7 in the list.  Disgusting habit aside, just how much concentration does it take for nose picking?  What does it say about these drivers that they’d be distracted from the road by it?  Are they performing some kind of detailed analysis on the haul from their rhinological expeditions?

2 Comments

  1. Kevin White says:

    What’s up with the 1% of males who were putting on makeup?

    I guess “tuning in a radio station” encompasses looking for and changing the cassette or CD. I’m surprised “working on a laptop” wasn’t included among the results. “Watching a movie” ought to be up there as well.

  2. Outlaw3 says:

    I think number 7 depends on things like how big your nose is, or how far up there you have to dig. Ugh. What were they thinking about even having that as a response?