Driving is so easy now, why not watch TV while driving, asks Giles Smith

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French long-distance lorry drivers have sparked alarm with a new pastime for beating boredom at the wheel: watching television.

From today, police have been ordered to keep a close watch on the cabs of poids lourds (heavy goods vehicles) after reports that drivers are putting their feet up on the dashboard and watching videos or playing computer games while steaming along at the regulation 90km/h (56mph).

To take their eyes off the road, they have devised a technique for “driving by ear”, according to Le Figaro, which started a scare with complaints from motorway maintenance workers.

When traffic is not too dense, the driver sets the cruise control and puts the lorry’s right wheels on the band that marks the edge of the hard shoulder. These are often ribbed, making a noise and alerting sleepy drivers that they are heading off the road.

Le routier then steers by sound, leaving him free to watch a DVD, play a game or read, witnesses say.

While the Government was initially sceptical of the reports, lorry drivers confirmed them to France-Inter, the main public radio. “I have seen guys reading while driving but I don’t know about video games. That would seem a bit difficult to do,” said a routier called Jean-Maurice on the A13 Paris-Normandy motorway.

Another practice is upsetting the maintenance workers: drivers who avoid pitstops by urinating into bottles and throwing them out of the window. “We are picking up big quantities of bottles of urine from the ditches,” Romain Fronteau, head of the Cofiroute motorway company, said.

The companies that run the autoroutes are alarmed about the danger to their personnel. About 15 people a year are killed on the hard shoulder and maintenance crews are having close shaves. “The last time, the wheel nuts of a 38-tonner ripped open one of our service vehicles like a sardine can,” said Jean-Michel Perrin, a highway manager at Saint-Arnoult, south of Paris.

Jacques Boussuge, of the association of French autoroute operators, said that the group wanted penalties for these new types of dangerous driving.

President Sarkozy’s Government has ordered the surveillance of lorry drivers for up to three months.

Driven to distraction

— 40 per cent of Canadians have admitted reading or writing while driving

— Last year a British lorry driver was caught steering with his knees while he ate spaghetti from a pan. He was jailed for eight weeks

— A 2006 Goodyear survey found that 25 per cent of Russians have had sex while driving

— Last year the Vermont state representative Thomas F. Koch considered passing a Bill outlawing playing musical instruments while driving after his wife saw a driver playing the flute

Source: Canada Safety Council, Times archives