Generational Car Safety

I know that life lessons are typically meant to be taught from parents to their children, but sometimes it works the other way around.

I learned in school and in driver’s ed about the dangers of driving and texting, and I just couldn’t believe it when I would see my mom texting while she was at the wheel. So, one day when we were driving home, we had a long talk that really impacted both of us in a deep and very unexpected way.

I remember asking my mom how she could expect me to learn to not text while driving when I got my license if I watch her do it. I told her that I’ve always learned by living up to her as an example of what to do and not do in life. I feel like my saying that was a real turning point. To me at first it was just a question, and it wasn’t necessarily intended to be any kind of pivotal moment. But she paused for a minute, handed me her phone, and started crying a little. She said some things about actions being louder than words, she wanted nothing more than my safety, and she acknowledged being guilty of doing exactly what she had been telling me not to do.

Since she seemed pretty moved by this, I started telling her what I recently learned about the horrible stats of the deaths and impacts of texting and driving. I told her about a survivor of someone who was hit by someone texting who came to speak to us at school and how that really made an impression on me. And she said she’d never do it again.

I am very interested in car technology and have taught myself how to install several car devices, including backup cameras and touchscreen audio systems. My mom has an older car, so I spent some time learning how to install a hands-free system for her phone, which was a turning point for her to make the move to not text while driving. She got used to and now loves the safety of voice-activated commands where she doesn’t have to look at her phone when she needs to know about an important text. And she has made it a habit to only have Siri read her texts that matter. She saves the others for when she’s not driving. And this was a huge change.

Then we started a contest where each of us tries to convince someone we know to stop texting and driving, and when one of us wins the other has to do the dishes for a week. So it’s become pretty interesting, except of course when I have to do the dishes. Yes, we’re pretty competitive in this family. But for this, I think it’s a good thing.

One week, each of our convinced friends broke their pact when we saw them texting. So since we both lost, we shared dish duty for that week and it was actually the most fun doing dishes alongside her every day and talking and laughing.

So when I read about this scholarship and saw the stats you noted about driving deaths, I really wanted to tell our story and how saying out loud that I saw my mom driving irresponsibly by texting started some changes in both our lives.

To me, the importance of driver education for reducing deaths on the road really hit home when I shared things I’ve learned with my mom, and she made this change. They say knowledge is power, but in this case, it’s very powerful and also very scary. But knowing the facts does change your actions.

I think there are many steps to take to help reduce driving deaths. But in my experience, even taking a little action to convince my own parent to stop texting and driving and then teaming up with her to persuade friends is a start. I think raising consciousness about this is one step, and I plan to continue taking other steps to keep the momentum going.

I’m at college now, and being a safer driver has sort of taken a different spin for me because I’ve never lived where it snows. So up here in the cold Midwest, I am now the one leaning on friends to help me learn how to be a safer driver in these freezing conditions. I can’t imagine anyone texting on icy roads, but I know I’ll never do it. And sometimes, when a text comes in that I know I’ll look at later and not while I’m driving, it makes me happy to know my mom is doing the same.