Eating a cheese and pickle sandwich while driving resulted in motorist Keith Pemberton being pulled over and booked by police officers at a roadside checkpoint on the A49 in Cheshire.
He was fined £60 and got three points on his licence after being convicted of not being in full control of the car.
Pemberton told the BBC: "They said I had not been in proper control of my car, but it's not as if I was swerving all over the road or driving badly."
The Cheshire police said: "The officer was right to give this driver a ticket. He cannot have had full control of his vehicle if he was eating a sandwich at the same time."
Road safety campaign Safe Speed said: "Cases like this illustrate the gulf between official and real road safety. It is vital that drivers are in proper control of their vehicles, but proper control is a state of mind, not a simple matter of what drivers are doing with their hands.
"The problem is that driving is largely a subconscious and highly skilled activity. The authorities can't see it or define it, so instead they seize upon what they can see.
"Eating a sandwich while driving can be safe or dangerous. It depends on the circumstances and what the driver is paying attention to.
"Road safety is in a very bad way - the authorities need to move away from their over-simplified dogma and start asking skilled drivers what is safe and what is not. The gap is enormous."
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