Having a meal behind the wheel is always a bad idea. But if you insist on taking the risk, at least avoid the most distracting and dangerous delights.
Food is a road hazard
Remember when your car was new and you wouldn't dare allow one kernel of popcorn or a drop of soda within 100 yards of its interior?
Experts say drivers should maintain that way of thinking regardless of how many miles are on their odometers.
SmartDrive Systems, a leader in fleet safety training and research, compiled data from more than 34 million risky-driving incidents. The study ranks food and beverages consumed while driving as a bigger distraction than talking on a cell phone.
"Eating while driving is dangerous and can be deadly," says Carnegie Mellon University professor Marcel Just, a leading neuroscientist and an expert on multitasking. "Concentrating on eating can be just as distracting as texting while driving. Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road."
Any food can get you into trouble, but experts say these take the cake as the most dangerous things to consume behind the wheel.
French fries
It's hard to dunk french fries in ketchup while keeping your eyes on the road. Then there's all the salt that will preoccupy your thoughts with guzzling a soda instead of staying focused on the light that's quickly changing from green to red. Add in the grease that will have you fumbling around your front seat for a napkin, and french fries are the fifth-most-dangerous food to eat while driving.
"This is a loaded gun of distraction because all those things overload your brain. You're thinking about thirst, getting the fry into the ketchup and not on your lap, and keeping the grease and salt off your wheel," driving instructor Schwartz says.
Who can think of driving with all that going on?
Popcorn
The salt in popcorn will have you looking for a drink or napkin instead of at oncoming traffic, the grease can make it tricky to hang on to the wheel, and a kernel or two can threaten your life.
This triple threat earns the movie snack favorite top honors and the distinction of most dangerous.
Dr. Paul Bryson, a specialist at Cleveland Clinic's Head and Neck Institute, says eating popcorn while driving poses a significant choking risk because it's tough to concentrate on properly chewing all the kernels while keeping your road wits about you.
"Incompletely chewed pieces of popcorn can cause choking or leave distracting particulates in the throat that can cause coughing or become a distraction to the driver while you try to remove the piece of popcorn from your mouth or throat," Bryson says.
Pizza
Pizza's ability to injure and jeopardize safety propels it to the second-most-dangerous spot.
"It takes just a second of contact with hot, greasy cheese dripping down your face to cause a first- or second-degree burn on the face," says Dr. Debra Jaliman, an assistant professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Dermatology.
The most common place to be burned is a corner of your mouth, where your skin is more delicate and thinner than on the rest of your face.
Looking for a napkin or something cool to calm that burn means you might not be paying attention to the road.
"Even if you're not burned, a slice of pizza often requires two hands to eat, so you can't safely steer your car (while) stuffing your face with a slice," says Stephanie Schwartz, a driving instructor and the owner of Roadrunner Traffic School in Phoenix.
Pizza is also greasy, which makes hanging on to the wheel a challenge.
Philly cheese steak
Sure, they're gooey and good, but they're greasy and messy, too. And you need two hands to get more into your mouth than into your lap. They can also be hot, which means there's the chance you'll end lunch with a burn -- and an accident.
The mess, distraction and burn potential earn this lunchtime favorite the No. 3 spot.
"An alert driver needs 1.5 seconds to react to something that happens while they are driving. A distracted driver who is splitting attention between eating and driving needs three seconds -- twice that much time to react," driving instructor Schwartz says.
By the time you put down your sandwich and get even one hand firmly on the wheel, it could be too late.
"You will have hit the child who darted out in the road or the car who cut you off," she says
Drinks without straws
It's often hard to unscrew a bottle cap with one hand. It's even harder to do so without taking your eyes off the road to look at the bottle. And while a can takes both hands only to open, it can be much trickier to grip and pop while steering.
Sure, you can stuff the bottle or can between your legs to keep one hand on the wheel, but then you're going to have to look down longer to make sure you don't spill it, thus taking your eyes off the road. That makes this a dangerous behind-the-wheel beverage no matter how you look at it, Schwartz says.
And if you do get the beverage open, hopefully you don't have to stop fast in midchug, or you'll be wearing your drink and could choke if a sip goes "down the wrong pipe.”
Sub sandwiches
This two-handed food has a tendency to fall apart, littering your lap and front seat with lettuce, sauce, condiments and crumbs. Not only are these things tough to manage while trying to watch the road, depending on the size of the sub, it could get caught up in the steering wheel. And that could make it tougher to swerve out of the way if an unexpected object (like a child or dog) appears in the road.
Bob Surrusco, the general manager of the Safe America Foundation and the SAF Teen Driving Institute in Marietta, Ga., says anything that can easily fall apart like a sub is dangerous in the car.
"When something spills, the driver's first instinct is to quickly clean it up," he says. "That can take the driver's attention away from the road, which increases the odds of getting into a car accident."
Hot dogs
Biting into one end of a hot dog inevitably sends contents squirting out the other.
"Focusing on keeping ketchup off your tie or onions from falling in between your seat and the console is very distracting," says Ann Furber, the director of Knight Driving School in Berwick, Maine.
So is thinking about how you're going to maneuver both the dog and steering wheel -- and to grab a few fries in between bites.
The result: You're a mess, and you have a bashed-in bumper.
"Looking at where those condiments and crumbs tumbled to, even for a second, takes your eyes off the road," Furber says. And since hot dogs are rarely served plain (unless you're under age 5), their mess factor earns them the distinction of being seventh on the most-dangerous list.
Cereal
Ever tried keeping cereal from sloshing out of the bowl while stopping quickly or making a left turn? It's not easy and requires a great deal of concentration.
And, Furber says, all that concentrating on keeping the bowl level and the spoon from not slipping doesn't leave time to think about the rules of the road.
"There are so many things to worry about, like not showing up to work with cereal dangling from your chin, milk stains on your shirt and spilled milk souring causing a horrible stink in your car, that there's hardly time to focus on rush hour traffic," she says.
Ice cream cones
Ice cream drips all over your hands, clothes, car seat and steering wheel.
So even though you can gobble a cone with one hand, you're going to be diverting a lot of attention away from traffic to make sure you don't miss a rogue dribble.
And don't think plopping a scoop in a cup is any better than juggling a cone. Even though a cup may eliminate the drip factor, "that requires two hands to eat," Schwartz says. "So you're trading a distraction for the unsafe move of steering with your knees, elbows or anything other than the safest way, with both hands."
Juicy fruits
Rounding out the list of dangerous road foods are ripe pears, oranges, strawberries -- just about any juicy fruit that creates a distracting dribble that could end up on your clothes. These fruits also leave your fingers tacky, so it's hard to grip the wheel comfortably.
Even bananas can be distracting, because you're worrying about how to break into one without rendering it too mushy to eat, or you're afraid that pieces will fall off and roll under your seat.
The mess and distraction are why fruit rounds out the list.
"If you're eating fruit, you have to focus on not choking on the seeds, where to store the rind, stem, peel or pit and not dropping a tiny bite or (a) grape," Furber says.
