I was astonished this week to read in the news that there was a lorry driver travelling in his lorry, with a laptop and DVD player mounted on his dashboard. Incredible as it may seem, but he appeared to be watching a DVD as he was driving a 30 tonne vehicle. Not only that, when he was stopped by the police, it was found that there were other faults with the vehicle including an under inflated tyre.
The police had identified nine other defects with the vehicle and stopped the driver continuing his journey until these things were fixed and his computer had been shut down.
Mrs Thom is always joking with me about how she can multitask and I cant, however, it is impossible to give the road your full attention when you have a film playing on a laptop computer mounted on the dashboard.
This driver took mobile cinema to a whole new, and extremely dangerous level. He was driving, what one would call, a dangerous vehicle that was more or less an accident waiting to happen.
With a vehicle that size, were to strike any other vehicles, it could cause serious personal injury to the occupants of any other vehicle, a fraction of its size.
It is difficult enough sometimes when little Thom is playing up in the car to keep full concentration on the road but to attempt to watch a film while driving a vehicle of that size is just plain stupid and could cause a road traffic accident with serious personal injuries.
