An Alabama man stopped in Georgia for “eating while driving” plans to challenge his ticket, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported.
“The officer explained to me that he observed me eating a burger for 2 miles,” Madison Turner told WSB-TV. “He said specifically three times, you can’t just go down the road eating a hamburger.”
The station said he would be challenging the ticket.
Turner had a double quarter pounder with cheese from McDonald’s, and added, “Maybe I was enjoying the burger too much I needed to tone it down. I was certainly willing to do so but I didn’t expect to be fined or punished.”
The ticket was written under Georgia’s distracted driving law. Under the comments section of the ticket, the police officer wrote, “eating while driving.”
The state’s distracted driver law says, “A driver shall exercise due care in operating a motor vehicle on the highways of this state and shall not engage in any actions which shall distract such driver from the safe operation of such vehicle.”
DUI attorney William Head, not representing Turner, told WSB the charge won’t likely stand.
“There was no accident here so the fact that this man was charged with eating and driving is a first for me,” Head said. “Maybe if you had a giant pizza in both hands and you weren’t holding the wheel or maybe if you had a watermelon, half watermelon and you were just diving into it holding it with both hands, maybe that would be something.”
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