Fast food restaurants should be convenient; and most of the time, they are incredibly convenient. However, how safe are they for the millions of people who use them everyday as they make their way to work, school, practice or elsewhere?
Whenever I drive to a fast food restaurants with my boyfriend, he always gets annoyed if I am the one who is driving because I prefer to skip the drive thru and go inside the establishment instead in order to place my order for a meal. I feel that when I am sitting at a drive thru window, there is simply too much pressure placed on me to figure out what it is that I want right away when what I need is more time to decide what it is that I want to eat to begin with! That being said, I also feel that after I order my food, I don t feel comfortable driving off with it right away. Rather, I would prefer to park my car or go inside of the restaurant so that I can eat what I ordered. I like to look at what I am eating, and in order to make that happen safely, I can t drive at the same time. I mean, I could drive while eating fast food, but I wouldn t claim to say that it is the safest thing in the world.
Driving while eating (in my opinion) is incredibly dangerous. There are too many distractions when you are eating. Not only this, but when you are eating, you need both of your hands (usually) in order to eat efficiently. Now, there are some people who are clearly exceptions to this rule. My boyfriend is one of those people. He is what I like to call a “fast food professional”. He has been to every drive thru of every fast food restaurant, knows what all of the menus say and exactly how much each meal will wind up costing so that he knows exactly how much change to have handy.
Just because there are people like my boyfriend who are fast food ready and have been through the motions of ordering, driving and eating fast food while in the car behind the wheel, this doesn t necessarily mean that it is the right thing to do. When you are driving a car or other type of vehicle, you have to make sure that all of your attention is where it should be: on the road. If you are eating, you inevitably are forcing yourself to divide your attention between the food you are consuming, the roadway before you and the other drivers around you.
So, what can you do if you are in a situation where you are eating and driving? If you are driving with someone who insists on stopping to eat, you can warn them that in the future, if they drive with you, you would prefer it if they didn t eat in your car (this way you don t have an excuse to stop at a fast food place), or you can simply ask if they mind if you sit for a while to finish your meal before you start to resume driving.