Man or beast, don’t drive distracted

Written by Joe Pisani
Thursday, 03 February 2011 00:00

By Joe Pisani

While I was pulling out of Cumberland Farms, all excited about buying the winning Powerball ticket, I almost crashed into a pole because the car coming at me was being driven by a shih tzu with one of those Fu Manchu mustaches and a pink bow in her hair.

Suddenly, my smart-phone started shouting: “Danger, Will Robinson, danger! Puppy speeding on the Post Road!”

What really scared me wasn’t the dog’s creepy mustache but that she didn’t have her paws on the steering wheel.

Why, I wondered, would the Department of Motor Vehicles ever give a driver’s license to a dog that didn’t know how to steer correctly?

Then, crazy me, I realized the dog was sitting on the owner’s lap and he was probably teaching her to drive, which really scared me because it meant that dimwit was the one controlling the car.

You’ll probably say, “You journalists are always looking for something to complain about. Stop picking on that dog-owner just because he wants his pet to understand the rules of the road so she can drive him home after happy hour at TGIF.” That would truly be a new and revolutionary concept in motor-vehicle safety — the designated doggie driver.

OK, even if the dog had a learner’s permit, how could she see the road with all that hair in her eyes? The tragic reality is that I’ve seen many dogs — and an occasional infant behind the steering wheel, and I have to wonder why the heck they’re not strapped to the seats.

Unrestrained dogs cause tens of thousands of car accidents a year, and legislation is being considered in Oregon that would fine motorists $90 for having pets behind the wheel. Hawaii is currently the only state to forbid the practice, along with the city of Troy, Mich.

Distracted driving, which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood describes as an “epidemic,” kills almost 600,000 people a year and causes 500,000 injuries. Whether you’re petting your dog, text-messaging, shaving, brushing your hair, plucking your eyebrows, talking on the cell-phone, fumbling with your iPod or eating a messy gyro, it can be fatal. (By the way, I’ve seen people doing all these things and more.)

Sure, this is America, land of the free and home of the irresponsible, but behavior like that needs to be outlawed. In the enlightened state of Connecticut, it’s illegal to hold a phone and drive, although a lot of people break the law because they’re more concerned with text-messages about the party at Barcelona than concentrating on the road.

The National Safety Council estimates that 200,000 accidents a year are caused by motorists who are texting and 1.4 million by people talking on cell phones. Text-messaging while driving, which is banned in 30 states, quadruples the risk of an accident and is responsible for 18% of motor-vehicle fatalities.

Teenagers seem especially susceptible to this sort of distraction, and unfortunately, many of them learn too late that driving requires complete concentration whether you’re a man, woman, adolescent or pet owner.

Joe Pisani can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .