Distracted driving – is it worth it?

When I’m driving with my friends we play a game where we guess why the bad drivers around us are driving bad. The top 3 answers are that they are on their phone, they’re old, or they’re a woman–it’s really rough when it’s all three. But the eye-opening part is about eighty percent of the time the reason they’re driving bad is because they’re on their phone. Driving is something that most people do daily, which might lead us to believe that our experience automatically makes us good drivers so we are okay to take a risk by checking our phones thinking “It only takes a second to send this text”.

What else takes a second? Cars slam on their brakes with only enough stopping time if one is paying attention, kids running into the street thinking the car will see them or maybe they are too young to think of a consequence at all, or a cop seeing the phone out while driving and turning on his lights to pull the car over. Life can change and even be taken away in just one second.

No one wants to take away a life or cause an accident, it all comes down to this idea everyone has in their head that bad things won’t happen to them. No one thinks they’ll be part of the statistics. But, the data seems to disagree as the numbers are insanely high for not only car accidents but accidents because of phone usage; they will keep rising until something is actually done to stop it. Just last week a girl I knew, a 17-year-old high school girl, was hit by a car and killed. The mom that hit her had no intentions of going to the soccer fields and hitting a pedestrian, but that’s what happened. Being on either side of this situation is heartbreaking and something no one wants but when it does happen it really causes the problem of distracted driving to be so real and seen as a problem that actually needs to be fixed so this doesn’t happen again to anyone.

There’s no denying that phones have become such a big part of our lives. For example when phones go off it’s a natural response to reach and check the phone, no matter what one’s doing at the moment. Being transparent, I know how hard it is sometimes to keep my phone away even while driving. I took driver’s education, I have my parents constantly telling me not to, and I’ve seen the consequences of it first hand, and still it’s tempting. Especially when that cute boy texts me and all I want to do is respond real fast. Or I have a long day and the 5 minutes of free time is while driving and I just want to answer all my notifications. There’s a million reasons to go on a phone and it’s so natural it can be something that’s not even given a second thought, even while driving.

It seems like everyone uses their phones while driving, but in reality not all drivers text and drive. In some ways it seems like a problem that only needs to be worked on by those that participate in it but it really is something that affects everyone so it is a problem that everyone should be focused on solving. No one can pick what the drivers next to them do. Along with that no one gets to pick the consequences of others or their own choices. Instead of having to be worried something bad will happen as a consequence of texting and driving, just put the phone away until later – I promise the life we all have on our phones will still be there later. We should also encourage the driver of any car we are in to not use their phone while driving. My dad often motions to drivers next to him to put down their phones while driving. Even the most careful driver can be affected by this problem when those around are not being careful as well.

Life is precious. No one knows when their time is up. It’s sad that some people’s time is up because of someone’s selfish choice to answer their text while behind the wheel. That little kid that was just trying to ride their bike shouldn’t lose their life because that teenager was texting and driving. That guy on a run shouldn’t get hit because of a text someone had to respond to. That trip shouldn’t be canceled because it now can’t be afforded as one had to pay an over $1,000 fee for texting and driving. There’s so many downsides to texting and driving that could change lives forever. It doesn’t even have benefits that can make it worth it. That text can wait. Any friend would much rather have their text responded to 10 minutes later than never being able to receive a text from their loved one again.

I only have control over myself on the roads, I will never pick up my phone while behind the wheel and never let anyone I’m driving with do the same. Everyone needs to learn this lesson; it’s a lesson that should never have to be learned the hard way. Texting while driving isn’t cool and I hope it becomes something that isn’t so normalized and instead viewed as one of the most unsafe things done on the road. Instead of letting instinct and phone addiction rule our lives, take a look out the window while driving and enjoy the world.