Driving While Stupid

Jamielle Silvia

ENGL 0250-154

H. Susi

November 20, 2011

Driving While Stupid by Dave Barry

Dave Barry’s humorous column “Driving While Stupid” is about people in Miami who basically drive like imbeciles. He explains one major story about a man who took his sun visor off and replaced it with some sort of video system. Barry explains this man was driving extremely fast and wasn’t paying any attention to the road at all, serving back and forth between five lanes. Barry has been to several states but he claims that Miami has the worst drivers by far.

I see people “driving while stupid” all the time. It seems to happen every single day and I cannot lie, I am sometimes a victim of this. Sometimes I catch myself changing CD’s not paying attention to the road. When I am in my car I love to listen to music and I play my radio louder than most people. Another thing is, I love to speed although it is dangerous and I know this, I have a need for speed. After an accident which helped me open my eyes I now taking driving more seriously and pay attention at all times. I still play my radio loud but I have gotten better about the speeding.

This issue has become very serious because people who are distracted while driving are more likely to be the people to cause a car accident or to get in one. It has become more common to see a person eating, talking on a cell, or worse texting. Almost every day I see a person eating in their car leaving themselves with only one hand on the wheel. I find this to be so dangerous. My sister thinks driving with her knee is okay and she does it all the time, it freaks me out. I have never once done it and I never plan to I would be too scared to not have at least one hand on the wheel.

            Many people do not take driving seriously when they should. I see all the time in bad weather people driving super fast when they should be driving the speed limit or less. More often now people text while driving, which has been the cause of many teens’ death or injuries. Little things like texting I feel can wait till you get to a destination or you are stopped somewhere. Most people do not realize that when they do these stupid things they could harm not only themselves but also an innocent person because of their stupid decisions

            I felt this essay was very funny but also focused on a serious issue. I love the way the author used his humor. I enjoyed reading this column because it just explains how serious driving is and people take it so lightly like it isn’t important. Are making some stupid decisions behind the wheel I started taking driving very seriously.