On the way to work this morning, there was a car in the left lane that was driving rather below the speed limit. I took a look and thought I saw the woman driving the car put a map down on the passenger seat. So, fine, she’s lost and driving a little slowly. Big deal. We passed her, and I looked over again…and she was reading. Not a map, not even directions, but what looked like an essay or something – several pages stapled together with lots of text on the one on top. This baffles me, almost as much because I can’t read in the car without getting very carsick, as the fact that this woman was driving along at 60 miles an hour, reading! That has to be more distracting than having a conversation on a cell phone – there are a million things you need to look at while driving, and a document propped on your steering wheel isn’t one of them. I really hope she never causes a terrible accident, but I also really hope she gets caught someday. (The irony of it is, we passed a state trooper during this whole incident, but he was looking too hard for people speeding, which she wasn’t, to see her reading. Or maybe that’s when she put the paper down for a minute – I’m not sure.)
