Name: Lily Robertson
From: Tallahassee, FL
Votes: 0
This
past summer, my friends and I were planning on going on a beach trip.
We were all beyond excited because it was meant to be an end of the
year celebration, as well as a birthday celebration. The morning of
the beach trip, we packed all of our stuff and were on our way by
around 9 a.m. We only lived about two hours out from the beach, so
the drive wasn’t terrible. However, being sixteen and
seventeen-year-olds, we had music blasting while attempting to talk
over it. We finally got off the interstate after 123 miles of
straight road, and onto a highway. We weren’t aware of the speed
limit and felt “immune” to such a fast speed after 123 miles of
it; until we saw flashing lights, realizing we had just topped a hill
going 85 miles-per-hour—30 over the speed limited. The sheriff took
us all out of the car, telling us of the numerous things that could
have happened: there could have been a family turning into their
driveway, a deer could have run out, a man could have been in the
road—all things that had not been at the forefront of our mind. I
broke down; not out of anger, but out of guilt and fear of how true
what he said was. This incident and that lecture, has truly revealed
how important it is to always be conscious of what is going on while
in a car, whether or not I am the driver.
Driving
is a privilege we are lucky to have in America. Unfortunately, on
average, 34,000 people die in America each year from driving-related
events. That is far too many innocent lives taken because of
carelessness. However, many people are unaware of this horrific
statistic; awareness beings with education. It is common knowledge
that distracted driving takes many lives, but it’s like putting a
name to a face—we must put a statistic to the reality. In turn,
with a more educated public, we can begin to implicate further
instruction and regulation to promote safe driving, ultimately
decreasing the number of driving-related fatalities. Regulations such
as Georgia’s new “hands-free cell-phone law”, should be
extended to more states. Many may assume that such regulations aren’t
effective, but in the last month, there have been 1,000-plus tickets
issued on the basis of the new Georgia driving regulation. That could
hypothetically correlate to 1,000-plus lives saved. Further
regulation, such as lowering the maximum volume of a car radio system
could be implemented, to decrease distracted driving due to so
called, “car jam-sessions.” Even just a simple accountability
reminder, automatically played by the car robot speaker when a door
opens, promotes awareness and hopefully will reduce distracted
driving.
All this to say, there are an
uncountable number of ways we can address such a pressing issue. We
must remember that driving is a freedom; we mustn’t risk stripping
someone of their freedoms
because of our lack of
attention.
