Texting while Driving: I do it!

And I do it in a car with a standard shift.

I’m actually quite a multi-tasker.  I eat, talk on the phone, drink (not alcohol), and fiddle with the radio while driving and shifting.  When people ask how I do it, I usually reply in jokingly, “We have knees for a reason.”

The actual answer is that I know how to prioritize my tasks.  I know that if I’m sitting in something that weighs 3000 pounds moving at 40+ mph, I had better give it all the attention it deserves.  This is why typing a text message that would normally take me twenty seconds will take me a minute to type while driving.  This is why I consistently trail off while talking on a phone while driving.  This is why I’ve missed my mouth on many occasions trying to eat while driving.

I liken it to being a CPU.  Driving requires a certain percentage of my processing bandwidth; let’s say it’s 80%.  In an emergency maneuver, it might require 100%.  So what do I do?  I schedule all other tasks to use 20% of my processing bandwidth or less, and make sure that they can be instantaneously ended at any point.

Don’t go out and try doing this unless you’re already a really good driver.

~ by rockdave on September 20, 2008.