Eric Thompson: Oddballs on the open road

Dogs in the driver's seat can cause chaos if they become tangled in the steering wheel. Photo / NZ Herald

I don't know what it is about summer, but the crazy drivers just seem to get crazier.

We've all seen what happens when seatbelts aren't used, or when drivers travel too fast for the conditions.

Then there's the point-and-shoot brigade - drivers who flatten the throttle on a straight road but slow to a crawl through the windy bits.

It's one of my favourite past-times: watching a car whizz by me on a straight piece of road only for me and my ageing Honda Civic to be held up by it at the next bit of windy road.

It happens so much these days that I don't get any more satisfaction from going around the outside of said point-and-shooters.

But one thing I can't get my head around is a recent report that said police were "stunned" by the number of small children discovered in foot wells and car boots.

Or the report of the American woman who was stopped by police for breastfeeding her baby while driving her other children to school. Having said that, I was sitting at traffic lights in the winterless north when I noticed something strange going on in the car in front of me.

There was a blur of something bouncing around in the back seat then, all of a sudden, this dog bounded up on to the rear parcel shelf. As we moved off, the dog bounded down on to the back seat and then bounced over on to the front seat. As we headed out of town, the driver pulled the dog over on to his lap and proceeded to accelerate to about 90km/h.

How in God's name he managed to drive a car with a medium-sized dog on his lap I have no idea.

I dropped back even further so I'd have enough room to avoid any chaos if the dog decided to get tangled up in the steering wheel but, just as I thought I'd seen it all, the driver's window came down and the dog stuck its head out. I must admit I nearly lost control of my car watching this dog lean across the driver's face and stick its head out into the air.

To top it off, the driver had to lean to the left to see past the dog. At that point, I slowed right down to let the numpty driver put a whole lot of road between him and me.

Now, I'm no great lover of dogs but sticking the mongrel's head out the window is a bit cruel in my book.

What would happen if a stone flicked up and smacked the dog in the head? Not only would it probably lose an eye, but it would cause all kinds of grief to the driver if it scrambled to pull itself back inside the car.

Farmers have the right idea, in my opinion. If they have to be transported, dogs should be placed in the back of a truck or a kennel. They should certainly not be sitting on a driver's lap and looking out the window.