AS I was zipping along the A64 the other day at a not inconsiderable speed (although well within the limit, officer), I started thinking about the vast number of ridiculous things modern drivers do while behind the wheel.

To be honest with you, it's amazing I had time to think about anything at all, what with searching for a Tweenies tape in the glove compartment, unwrapping a chocolate lime, singing The Wheels On The Bus and desperately trying to jam a slightly grubby looking dummy into a slightly grubby looking baby's wailing mouth.

This scenario will undoubtedly ring true with any parent who drives. Keeping an eye on the road is a priority, but it does tend to be "eye" singular as you need the other one to check up on the Tasmanian devils tied up with all manner of safety harnesses in the back.

For those of you who don't have children and who therefore still believe that driving can be quite a pleasurable activity, let me enlighten you.

It is a scientifically proven fact that children cannot sit still for longer than it takes to unwrap a Kitkat, suck the chocolate off and shove the denuded wafer fingers down the back of the sofa. It goes without saying then that a car journey, in which they are expected to perch angelically on their booster seat from Acomb to Aberdeen (or even Acomb to the Asda) without strangling themselves on their safety harness or getting their heads wedged in the window, is a nigh on impossible task.

That is why most parents are lucky if they have one eye free for the road and a hand for the wheel. Keeping kids vaguely sane during even the shortest of journeys entails maintaining a constant supply of food (something messy that they can crumble, smear or choke on always goes down a treat), music (that blummin' bus never gets a puncture) and games (let's see who can shout the loudest is a favourite in our family).

If you are very, very lucky (or have access to heavy duty medication) your kids will lapse into a coma-like sleep for the entire journey. But this can be something of a double-edged sword as a child who has slept for a couple of hours in the car tends to wake up crankier than a tiger being poked in the eye with a pointy stick.

So it is back to singing The Wheels On The Bus and lobbing additive-filled foodstuffs into the back seat again, I'm afraid - a skill which I believe groovy young things call "multi-tasking".

But it is not only parents who risk life and limb on the roads every day by multi-tasking their way along the motorway. According to a new survey by the insurance firm Zurich, a worrying number of motorists send text messages, read or even write while they drive.

The poll found that half of those people questioned carried out other tasks while behind the wheel, with one in three admitting to talking on mobile phones, one in ten sending text messages and one in five reading or (heaven help us) writing despite being in the driving seat.

Men were singled out as the more likely culprits, but I don't think the women were far behind as some of the other distractions listed included feeding a child, putting on make-up and changing clothes.

Modern life is all about distractions. We never do one thing when we could be doing two or three or four. Multi-tasking is our byword. But maybe it shouldn't be.

Maybe we should put aside our mobile phones, our urgent reports and our lippy and concentrate on reaching our destinations in one piece. Maybe we should do one thing well rather than two things terribly, especially if we are multi-tasking while hurtling at 70mph in a tonne of metal. And maybe I should take my own advice for once.

Updated: 08:53 Tuesday, June 24, 2003