Woody: Distractions are too distracting

By LARRY WOODY

According to a recent federal transportation study, 97% of all automobile accidents are caused by texting teenie-boppers named Tiffany.
Understand, that's just an estimate; the guy who was supposed to deliver the statistics to the transportation department for further study was rear-ended while sitting at a red light by a teenie-bopper named Tiffany. He's now compiling statistics about how many people are in traction.
Tiffany told the cops who worked the accident she "glanced down for, like, just a nano-second" to text her NBF Rhonda about the latest Lady GaGa tune on her I-pad and the next thing she knew, "some old dude had, like, wow, stopped in the middle of the, you know, road."
Informed the old dude had stopped for a red light, Tiffany expressed surprise.
"You mean we're, like, supposed to STOP for those things?"
I guess I shouldn't be too hard on young people and their texting epidemic. I myself was once a teen behind the wheel, and I remember fumbling around trying to insert my 8-track Bee Gees tape in the console player while keeping one eye on the road, one eye on the Big Mac I was eating and one eye on Darlene the prom queen who was applying her lipstick in the rear-view mirror.
Drivers have always been distracted by distractions. When Henry Ford drove the first T Model off the assembly line and onto the street he side-swiped a milk wagon when he glanced over at the exposed ankle of a comely young chambermaid standing on the sidewalk.
It's a short swerve from "glancing while driving" to "texting while driving."
Speaking of glancing, remember those iconic Burma Shave signs that used to be posted along the road? Of course you don't -- you're not old enough. Take my word for it, they were classic highway poetry.
The signs were placed at intervals of a mile or so, and went something like this:
First sign: "My gal Sal"
Second sign: "Is a sight to see"
Third sign: "But that sight"
Fourth sign: "Is just for me"
Fifth sign: "Burma Shave!"
My dad studied Burma Shave signs like a Shakespearean scholar studies first folios. He and my uncles would swap favorites, and sometimes -- when my mom and aunts weren't in the room -- supply their own raunchy punch lines.
I can see my dad now, hunched over the steering wheel, peering intently up the winding two-lane highway, focused on the next roadside sign. Talk about distracted -- a moose could have walked out in front of our car and he wouldn't have noticed.
It would have made a fitting Burma Shave sonnet:

1: "Watch out Buster "
2: "Or you'll lose"
3: "Your one-on-one"
4: "With that giant moose"

Amazingly, my distracted dad never had an accident while reading Burma Shave signs. Now that I think about, neither did I while fumbling with my 8-track tapes.
I'd text my kids and boast about what great drivers we were back then -- if I knew how to text.