Staying Safe!

There is an Editor’s Note in the latest issue of Realtor Magazine that I thought was a little odd. It was all about Realtor Safety Week, September 9th through the 15th. It discusses all the lurking bad guys out there who want to rob, rape or maim or murder us and recites all of those platitudes about how agents cannot be too careful out there.

That is all true. We should use common sense about personal safety – for both ourselves and our clients.

But she forgot something. No mention in this little Editor’s Note about Realtors’ driving!

Realtors are among the worst drivers on the road – and most of us spend a lot of time behind the wheel. And we are distracted for a lot of that time. Here are just a few of the things I’ve been known to do while behind the wheel:

* Eat a sandwich while tooling down I-95 to a listing appointment
* Yap on my cell phone
* Exceed the speed limit
* Gawk at FSBO signs and try to get the number written on a scrap of paper that I have to find somewhere on the floor of the car
* Play with my navigation system, which is an improvement over the old days when I tried to keep one eye on the road and another on my map book
* Read a new email that comes in on my Blackberry
* Drive along the highway with tears running down my face when my clients lost a bidding war
* Get behind the wheel when I might have benefited from a designated driver

And if I were to die in an auto accident caused by my carelessness, it would be more than a little embarassing, being an ex-Nader’s Raider and all.

Now, I may be the only agent on earth with bad driving habits. But I sort of doubt it. So during Realtor Safety Week, I suggest the real estate community keep in mind that our chances of being hurt in an automobile accident are probably a lot higher than those of being mugged or murdered by a prospect – unless we do something that really pisses them off.

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