Driving and Cell Phones -- That's Nothing. Try Breastfeeding!

OK! I'm borderline on the cell phone thing, but I do think some things are deffinitely dangerous to do while driving.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/629252

Breastfeeding while driving leads to crash -- By S.K. BARDWELL
Copyright 2000 Houston Chronicle -- Aug. 8, 2000, 10:04PM

With her 8-month-old son crying from hunger, Lucrecia Zuñiga Ortuno did what any nursing mother would do -- she nursed him. But in this case, according to police reports, she chose to breastfeed as she was driving, a decision that would lead to an accident.

Ortuno, 30, faces a felony charge of injury to a child, and was in jail with bail set at $5,000. Her 7-year-old daughter, who was unrestrained in the front seat of the car, required stitches to close a split in her lip, said Harris County Sheriff's Department Deputy Susan Cotter. The 8-month-old remained under observation at Texas Children's Hospital Tuesday.

Cotter is grateful the injuries were not more severe.

"I'm lucky I didn't have two dead kids out there," she said.

Cotter was dispatched to the one-car accident on North Eldridge Parkway just after 10 p.m. Monday. She said Ortuno told her that she had just left a friend's house and was on her way home. Then her son began to cry. She was nursing him when she drove her car off the road, hit a sign, then hit a fence.

"I couldn't believe it when I got out there," Cotter said.

No matter how novel or compelling the excuse, Cotter wasn't amused, and neither were prosecutors.



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I think there's a big difference. A cell phone (with the exception of dialing) allows a person to keep their eyes on the road. It's not any more distracting than eating, drinking, playing with the radio, etc. (Not that any of those are a good idea.) And, if you need both hands, you can always drop the pone.

The baby thing is just dumb -- they would be in the way, distacting, require the driver to take their eyes off the road frequently, and you can't just drop them to grab the wheel. The baby's life is in danger -- unrestrained between a person and the steering wheel / airbag. Of course, this lady also had her seven year old bouncing around the car.

Not to mention there's no way to legally breastfeed in a car, driving or not -- except I suppose for an athletic gal that can position herself over a rear facing carseat in the back seat.

And of course the biggest difference -- a cell phone isn't going to spit up or bite a woman's, um, chest.

TheFreak -- DWI is much more dangerous than talking on a cell phone. Breast feeding could be up there -- because it puts the baby at so great of a risk.

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