Reading a Book While Driving
Driver Reading a Book on Division Street
- OurPDX Shared Links
- Ruff! Is that martini for me? Woof Woof!
- Forest Park and The Skyline Tavern
- Seen: No More Police Murder
- OurPDX Shared Links
- Vote early and often (up to 5 times)
- SLL: Vanity Fare
- Catch someone lighting up in a bar? Dial 1-800-I’m-a-Snitch.
- Photos of Flooding in Oregon City
- A River Runs Through It
Shared Links
Our PDX Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by request. OurPDX™ and Our PDX Network™ are trademarks of Betsy Richter.
Our PDX Network is managed by Betsy Richter, created by a group of talented local authors, and fed by your enthusiasm, energy, and conversation.
Our thanks to Aaron Hockley for licensing his photographs to us and Guilty Carnivore and Janet Tingey for graphic design assistance!
Our PDX Network is using WP-Gravatar
Copyright © 2009 Our PDX Network
Is the irony intentional?
Hi Matt Y,
Thank you for the comment. Just to clarify, I took the photo at a red light. This driver continued to read and drive for 7 blocks.
Cheers,
Motor
I have never understood how people can think that is ok. I’d like to know what they were reading. I’m constantly reading but can’t imagine doing it while driving. That’s what the bus is for.
I’d like to hear more thoughts on this. Obviously, there are many tempting distractions to drivers - conversation with passengers, cell phones, radio, etc.
I can’t find the exact Oregon law on this. I found a few pages only marginally related:
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/TS/Traffic_Enforcement.shtml
> I have never understood how people can think that is ok.
I agree completely. My understanding is that you can be ticketed for this in a lot of states? How could that possibly be considered safe.
I would not have posted the picture if she had put the book down. It was amazing to me that she continued to read and drive.
I’ve seen this on the freeway in traffic @ 70mph. Freaks me out.
I don’t even try to take camera phone photos while driving I’m so paranoid of crashing or hitting something.
As for the legal side, I believe the driver can be ticketed for reckless driving, at the least.
Also, though I don’t know how well this would work in Portland-proper, but I live just inside Lake Oswego where it seems quite a few of our neighbors believe they own the road. Anyway, I’ve programmed the Lake Oswego dispatch number into my cell phone and make a point of reporting anyone who is driving in a way that might be dangerous to others. I don’t know how often this is effective, but it makes me feel like I’m at least doing something about it.