Distracted driving is no joke.
And it’s apparent from the many comments I received after a couple of recent columns that most of you aren’t happy with just how distracted some drivers are behind the wheel.
I highlighted an issue that seemed insane to me, that anyone would intentionally watch a video while driving. I’d seen a driver at a stoplight who was watching a movie or show of some kind on a cellphone mounted on a windshield.
Aside from the sanity issue, it prompted questions about Michigan’s hands-free cellphone law, which prohibits drivers from manually operating a cellphone behind the wheel. A local attorney told me there’s a dangerous loophole in that law that doesn’t actually prohibit someone from watching a video behind the wheel if
the phone is in hands-free mode or mounted on a windshield. A state safety official, however, said that’s still careless driving, which is also illegal.
But I also asked you for your distracted-driving horror stories, and you didn’t disappoint.
One reader described having to call out the mom of his twins for watching TikTok videos while driving. He said she never had driving problems before becoming addicted to the platform but has now had several minor fender benders and speeding tickets in the last couple of years.
Here's a selection of the stories I received, with some editing for clarity and brevity:
Frank Szymanski wrote that “I literally passed a woman on 94 heading west toward downtown from the east side and she's got her hands at the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock positions like a good driver, right, except each hand has a cellphone in it, and I couldn't quite tell which one she was texting or reading though it looked like they were both important enough to be sharing her attention. She was no doubt multitasking in a pretty dangerous way. Who does this?”
Don, of St. Louis, said “I was doing 80 mph. She passed me in a convertible while breastfeeding and FaceTiming. No hands on the wheel.”
Bob Lessnau, of Southgate, wrote that “the worst I saw was on I-94 going east. Around Cadieux, I got stuck behind a car going slower and slower in the right lane. I couldn't get around him because of heavy traffic so there I am going 30 mph wondering if he'd stop completely. Finally, he exits at Allard and as he's going up the ramp, he was so slow that I didn't think he could make it to the top. As I passed him, I looked over. Yep, talking on the phone totally oblivious that his car was barely moving.”
Jim Kerns, of Trenton, was "driving south on the Southfield Freeway — right lane. There is a lady seriously tailgating me, just a few feet. I can see that she has her phone on top of the steering wheel and is messing with it. OK, I'll be sure to not do anything sudden. My exit is coming up (Outer Drive) so I turn on the blinkers well ahead of time, ease over into the exit lane, and she follows on to the exit. Just before where the exit lane splits from the freeway she makes a sudden swerve back onto the freeway. I guess she was just locked onto my bumper and didn't notice that I was not continuing on."
James Disser, of St. Clair, said he retired in 2021 after being a policeman for 31 years, and this is the worst he's ever seen it:
"Distracted drivers look just like drunk drivers from behind: They drift and correct, drift and correct. I recently passed a young man on the freeway watching a movie on his phone, which was propped on the middle of his steering wheel. On July 29, I watched an 18-wheeler drift over the fog line and onto the rumble strip before correcting back into the lane. I immediately passed him and could see the truck driver still on his phone."
Disser suspects traffic ticket production "due to the demonization and defunding of police" is way down, and offered a possible corrective action:
"The only way you stop bad driving is by writing tickets. That’s it. Nothing else works."
Leslie Littell, of Auburn Hills, wasn’t sure if her story would count as distracted driving or just stupidity:
“But at a stoplight, while I was in the left turn lane, the lead car in the straight lane was being ‘driven’ by a young woman with her left foot out the driver’s side window, only her right hand on the steering wheel and really loud music playing. There was a passenger. So seemed like ‘party mode’ except it was in the day.”
Art Van de Putte, of Grosse Pointe Woods, was on a very heavily traveled, four-lane stretch of I-75 and “once saw a driver steering with her knees while she ate a salad from a to-go container, all the while doing 70+ mph. This was in Ohio, north of Cincinnati, not in Michigan, but still …”
Mike O'Hare, of Troy, was at a Rochester Road intersection. He had a green light “and as I started to go, a minivan blew through the red, and as if that wasn't bad enough, the next car came after it. When I caught up with the second driver at the Long Lake light she said she was just following the car in front of her. I told her she still had to obey traffic signals and could have killed me or herself.”
John Cipolletti was on Ford Road waiting for a light to change:
"I was behind a white delivery van in the middle of three lanes. The light turned green and everyone went but the van in front of me. I honked, but he sat there blocking me. I came around him on the left and looked to see what was going on with the van driver. He was reading a newspaper!"
And there were other perspectives as well.
One reader said he drives quite a bit, about 50,000 miles a year.
“I, too, have my phone mounted, and I do stream (movies or live stream of news or Spotify) and follow the hands-free law. I use it to pass time while driving, not to watch but to listen. For me, I pay more attention to what's in front of me and … around me. I know it’s odd but for me and many others (I asked the same question) they, too, use it for listening. Again, I am in my late 50s, been working in the IT field over 40 years, so I am not the average dog. I know how to turn off the distraction in my head.”
Thanks for all your comments. If you’ve got more distracted-driving stories, feel free to share them. On another topic, I'm still interested in hearing what you believe is the best car ever. You pick the criteria and tell me a little bit about why your choice makes the cut at elawrence@freepress.com.
Stay safe, and take it easy out there.
Eric D. Lawrence is the senior car culture reporter at the Detroit Free Press, and he also writes about recreational vehicles, boats and bikes. Send your tips and suggestions to elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: TikTok addiction behind the wheel sounds like a bad combination
