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Not sure what I think about smoking and driving. What I do object to though is people smoking in cars with young children and even babies.
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A life time of smoking killed my dad 1 year and 2 months ago. He died of colon cancer. Yes smoking causes all kinds of cancers besides just lung. He was 65. So all you people that smoke at all, let alone want to ruin your car doing so are just asking for it!! What a stupid question to post!! Who the hell needs to smoke so much as to need to do it while driving?!?! God damn idiots!!
Sorry, I?m a bit emotional on the subject.. But really, if you smoke so much that you have to do it while driving you deserve what you get.
Base
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You think that was a little too harsh? Ask me about how he actually died. The final moments. I won?t post them now but I will tell you he was 6?1? and weighed about 85 pounds in the end!
Smoking in your car? ;(
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My dad is 82, and gave up smoking at 80, after 65 years of smoking.
My mum died aged 60, from cancer, never smoked, and never lived with my dad, so it wasn't his smoke that caused the cancer.
Understand the weight thing as my mum looked like something out of Bergen-Belsen the day she died.
As I have said in previous posts, you're born and you die, and in between why not live your life and enjoy it as you want.
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pdc - surely the reason for a ban is not to control people's lives, but to stop those people smoking or using mobiles from ruining other lives because of losing concentration? For myself, I don't care if someone chooses to smoke him/herself to death. provided it is a conscious choice. Maiming or killing others is something I dislike intensely (or poisoning them indirectly).
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Andrew-T, this is slightly off topic, so I will keep it short.
I totally agree with a ban on using mobiles while driving. I would agree with a ban on smoking within public buildings, but to make it a criminal offence to possess tobacco, well... Can't even spark up in your own home? In any case, it is noted that it is the medical council who are suggesting this, not the govt.
i doubt the govt would ever do it because a) how would they replace the lost revenue in taxes b) more people alive means more strain on the state pension system. and figures on that new article show that the money spent on treating smokers in the NHS is much less than the revenue generated.
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Well, looks like someone somewhere wants to ban tobacco fullstop, not just in cars!
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3292979.stm
Wonder what aspect of our lives they will want to control next?
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Infact, in the article to which I posted a link, the opposite of "if you can smoke in a car, then why not use a mobile" is argued. If the govt can ban mobiles in cars, why can't they ban smoking everywhere!
ha! If I ever get to be powercrazed would someone please administrer involuntary euthanasia?
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Sorry to hear about your loss Base - my Grandmother died age 55 due to smoking, In fact I think there are very few people who have not lost a relative/close friend from smoking.
It seems that the general opinon from those that do smoke is that it's not particularly distracting. Why then do insurance companys ask if you smoke and weight premiums accordingly? Do they look at the tax you pay on fags and see it as an easy way of getting money?
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OldP - insurance premiums are weighted for various factors because statistics show the chances are better/worse - simple as that. Younger drivers have more crashes, etc. etc.
But we all know that some smokers are susceptible to lung cancer while others survive to a good age. Insurance will become harder when people can get genetic tests to show which type they are.
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If insurers get access to genetic info to set their premiums then what's to stop your boss etc. (ever seen Gattaca?) But I digress...
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I have been driving (and smoking) for about 18 years.
I stopped smoking 3 weeks ago (permanently, touch wood!).
To answer the original question, I have never been stopped by the police for smoking.
I dread to think how many fags I have consumed while at the wheel, must be tens of thousands. At no time have I ever felt that it affected my ability to drive safely. You soon get the knack of putting your fags within easy reach and being able to light them without taking your eyes off the road.
Only hairy moments have been when I have dropped a lighted fag. It takes a bit of discipline to pull over and stop before hunting for it, but that is what I have done.
The same does not go for mobiles. Hands free is fine, and holding a phone while cruising is fine, but dealing with junctions, roundabouts or unexpected situations is a different thing altogether (particularly in a manual car). I would be the first to admit that using a hand-held mobile phone while driving is dangerous.
Hopefully this will be a rhetorical question for me from now on, but I do think that we are getting too self rightious and nannying about smoking. Ultimately, if we want to smoke and kill ourselves, we ought to be allowed too. Nobody can seriously argue that we do not know what we are doing. If smoking does not make us unsafe at the wheel, we should be allowed to smoke. People are too quick to ban things they disapprove of, and it is a trend that is more and more worrying.
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More worrying than smoking while driving is today's CeeFax story regarding an Ohio woman stopped for breastfeeding while driving.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3293447.stm
I sincerely hope this doesn't catch on over here.
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Depends who she was breastfeeding...
I've smoked whilst driving since 1964, well at least until I got my Bora back in May, when I decided I wanted to keep the interior in pristine condition.
It was so much easier when cars had quarter lights as the air flow carried the ash away safely.
Comparing smoking to using a mobile phone is much easier.
You don't keep a cigarette permanently in your mouth, but using a mobile phone clamped to your ear means just one hand is free to steer, change gear, operate various controls and, for many, to pick their nose.
Apart from the fact that you can't do all this, drive with due consideration and also concentrate on a phone conversation, it's a very good chance that you will eventually end up having an accident.
Even worse are 4x4 drivers who use mobile phones - such vehicles can cause very serious damage or fatalities if they are in collision with a car - and to drive one safely you need to be in full control at all times.
The strange thing about the new mobile phone law is that previously you could be summoned for driving without due care and attention - now it's just a modest fine if you are caught.
A step in the wrong direction I feel.
I witnessed a simple accident last night in which an elderly pedestrian was hit by a Chrysler Cruiser driver, who had turned sharp right into a wide junction.
He admitted afterwards that he just hadn't seen the pedestrian at all until it was too late - to add to his anguish he knew him.
I dread to think just how more serious this accident might have been if the driver had been using a mobile phone.
However, the overall stupidity of so many UK drivers - such as the cases mentioned earlier in the thread - leaves me speechless on many an occasion.
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I'm not sure that it's fair to compare smoking with mobile use. It isn't the holding of the phone that's the real problem. It's the serious distraction of holding a conversation on a phone. This has been proved in various experiments.
There could be some comparison if you compare smoking with dialling a number on a phone, which could be seen as similar to lighting up, although the smoker takes far less time funbling than a dialler would I think.
As an ex-smoker I hate cigarettes, but would not support a ban on smoking while driving. I did it myself for years in my youth without a problem. I have also tried using a mobile while driving and it is far more dangerous. Lighting up is not really any worse than switching on the radio or changing stations.
To a non-smoker that may seem an odd comment, but a smoker goes through the actions of lighting up hundreds (thousands?) of times and it becomes second nature. Once the few seconds of lighting up are over, actually smoking the cigarette takes no effort and does not distract, unless it's dropped in the lap of course!
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Thanks for your comments, but you seem to be agreeing wholeheartedly with most of what I have said...:-)
But I do beg to differ on one point. Holding a mobile phone to your ear IS a problem, apart from the small matter of trying to concentrate on the conversation AND pay attention to what\'s happening on the road.
By clamping a mobile phone to your ear you have only one hand left, as I said, to steer, change gears (unless it\'s an automatic, but still no excuse), operate controls etc.
Add to that those fools who actually key in text messages or phone numbers whilst on the move and you may realise just why I get so steamed up about the use of mobile phones in cars.
I\'m not all that happy either about hands-free kits because a conversation is still being carried out, but a little less risky than the user actually holding the mobile.
Life on the roads today is difficult enough with so many distractions (i.e. better half chattering away on the left), alert to possible problems or dangers ahead etc, without also having to contend with the idiots with a mobile phone clamped to their ears.
I\'ve no problems with people smoking and driving for the same reasons that you mention i.e. like driving it\'s an automatic process honed over the years.
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