This was mentioned on the BBC breakfast show today and they had a guy on who was fighting for smokers rights. Just watching and hearing what this guy had to say made me angry. Since mobiles are banned whilst driving, drinking and eating are banned why is smoking not banned? If you drop your phone in your car you can safely pull over. If you drop a lit cigarette whilst driving you're instantly going to start looking for it! Anyone with common sense should realise that smoking whilst driving is much more distracting that talking to someone on the phone. Only this morning the car infront of me threw a lit half used cigarette out the window at me. Why do people think it's ok to throw things that are on fire out of their car? Anyone else have any thoughts on this topic?
I agree! I know car manufactures have mostly stopped putting ash trays in their cars as standard but it didn't help. The really desperate ones (like my mum) just has a little glass bowl on the front sill.
Smoking ***, the only use I have for cig lighter's in cars to power devices. I totally agree that smoking whilst driving it just plain wrong.
Smokers have the right to make themselves stink, change the colour of their teeth and give themselves a higher risk of lung cancer. They do not have the right to risk the safety or health of others. That is my entire view of smoking, it's an addictive habit which is extremely bad. Ask people why they smoke, you'll get rubbish responses.
Even if it's a lit cigarette, there are still other distracting things in the car. If they want to kill themselves in their own car so be it. What REALLY REALLY pisses me off, is that these people thing it's OK to flick it out of their cars, lit (or not even). Not only is it littering, but that piece of fire hits my car. Those people should go FOAD imo
Most people I know who started smoking while at school say as a reason that they just did and there is no reason... Translation: "I wanted to be cool..." Now, those people usually say stress... Now that's just ******** surely? Smoking may temporarily relive stress, but then doesn't the stress returns as you start craving the cig's again? The desperation I've seen of people smoking outside in pissing rain is enough for me to think that. If people are going to have an excuse for smoking at least be truthful and say that you just like it or that you started as a kid and now your well and truly addicted and don't want to/have will power to quit right now. Anything that has an effect on someone like that shouldn't be safe to use while driving.
I totally agree. Really ? I smoke because I was an ejit when I was 17, and now I'm ****ing addicted, it pisses me off no end. I've tried to stop but always failed, crap will power tbh. As for the driving and smoking I suppose the point about potentially dropping the cigarette is valid, but when driving and smoking you can at least have both hands on the wheel obviously in between puffs.
In fact it's my morning break time and I can't wait to go outside to the fresh air and have a puff on a tab. Ohhh yeah baby.
I just gave up the cigs, best thing I ever did. You'll be surprised at how rich you get when you quit yoda
Best thing to do is use the NHS, seriously, I know loads of people that have used it to give up, they provide subsided Gym Membership, subsidised Nictoine Patches/gum and of course counselling. What was the "really?" for?
I totally agree Jamie. Imo it should be the same penalty for smoking in a car as is for mobile phone usage. But then I have very strong views on smoking due to having had a grandparent die 2 years ago (he was 3 months from retirement) due to heart problems caused by smoking.
You can hardly say that without knowing what other people are going through or sitting in their shoes. Who knows why anyone does anything?
I think his point is that there is no good reason to start smoking. There are just lots of bad reasons.
Why is it rubbish, it's the truth, I could make up story about being pressured into smoking by my peers if you like, but that's simply not true. I know it was a rather stupid thing to do, as do most other smokers I know. Your right there isn't really good reason to start, but here's the thing I did start and so long as my smoking doesn't effect you then it's my problem to deal with.
TBH, I've been racking my brains to come up with some sort of reasoning as to why I do smoke and throw my cigarette butts out the car window. I'm so against littering generally and I'm otherwise a really polite driver but for some reason I've never changed that habit. A lot of it comes down to the fact i don't want to smoke in a closed environment so i have to have the window open and a natural progression of that is to flick your ash out the window. Then I have nowhere to stub it out - i use my ash tray to hold my mp3 player - so naturally it's out the window. I'll do my utmost to address this.
I don't get that, how can it be the lesser of two evils? Does someone threaten you to start smoking? Do you start smoking just to fit in? Yoda: sorry, I realise I've come off sounding arsey, but it's a pet peeve of mine which is why I'm looking forward to the smoking ban. I've never kissed a girl that smokes, even if they've hit on me, purely because of the smoking thing. I've helped people to give up smoking, even people I've never met, I've been burned a lot of times by smokers in clubs not taking care of what they're doing. Sorry.
