Dashboard Buddies

When we hear people talk about distractions the first thing in our minds is phones, the radio, eating and drinking, or something related to that, but what about those cute little toys on our dashboard. There are many different types of dashboard buddies some of the more common ones are bobble heads or the Hawaiian girl, but they can be anything, rubber ducks, miniature stuffed animals or toys from a kid’s meal.

I have a dashboard buddy. He is a stuffed wingless penguin about 3 ½ inches tall. Since he is a stuffed toy, he does not always stay in one place and he slides around my dashboard and sometimes falls off of it. The urge to pick up my buddy and put him back on his home, is a strong feeling. I’ve waited till I was at a complete stop before I picked him up or I might have caused a crash.

A lot of my friends have them and even though they are fun to play with and interesting to look at they can be unsafe. If one of the buddies has glitter or reflective material on it that is distracting, or if the buddy has a tendency to slide around on the dashboard and fall off it poses another distraction. Since my buddy was distracting me and falling off his little perch, I had to move him from the dashboard to the back seat where he rides safely to this day.