Dangerous Distracted Driving

When I took my first driver education class as a freshman in high school, I thought I knew pretty well how dangerous the roads could be when someone was not paying attention or was not listening to the rules. However, this class soon told me something different. At the time, I thought that the videos I was shown had been a little over-the-top for a freshmen class, but looking back on it made me realize what an impact they had. I was shown a few bad wreck videos, as well as a video where a police officer had almost been run over when he had been doing a traffic stop on a speeding vehicle. Driver negligence like this can very easily cost people lives, and not just the people driving. It can affect everyone.

Despite the examples I was shown being very intense versions of what might happen, I think teaching the results of such negligence is incredibly important for a driver education class. When new driver’s and learning students are presented with the horrors of what might come from distracted driving, it sets reality in for them. I will always remember the speech given to us by a man who had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident due to a drunk driver, and how it had affected him and his family. Seeing the effects made me hope to never become the person to be distracted enough to potentially harm or kill someone else. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducted distracted driving programs within the states of Connecticut and New York. Thanks to these programs, hand-held phone usage dropped from 6.8% to 2.9% (“Distracted Driving Laws, Education and Enforcement | US Department of Transportation”). Looking at these statistics, we might be able to take a guess that implementing more programs like this, whether within schools or not, could help the issue of distracted driving through hand-held cell phone usage.

While I have never gotten into a car crash myself, both my mother and father have- in the same exact car. My mother hit a deer and totaled the car, but my father had been hit in a T-intersection a few months prior due to a speeding driver and poorly taken care of roads. While he had poor vision of the incoming traffic and decided to go, a truck not paying attention and instead speeding hit the front end of his car and completely pushed him into the other side of the road. Even though my dad was only minorly injured, it was still scary to get the phone call from my mom after school that my dad had been in an accident, and we would not have the car for a few weeks while it was repaired. I can not imagine how it must feel for others to receive a much more grim phone call, such as one telling them their family had been hospitalized or killed due to a distracted driver.

Even though my mom had most definitely been speeding during her run-in with the deer, she still continues to speed. Sometimes, I feel completely unsafe with how she drives. Despite me asking her to slow down, she will insist that it is fine and continue to speed. She usually weasels her way out of speeding tickets and even warnings. This leads her to think there are no consequences to speeding as fast as she wants, so she continues to do it. The one time I was pulled over was on the interstate just after my 18th birthday, and I was ticketed for speeding. This was a routine traffic stop they were doing since it was right after the holidays, and that completely discouraged me from ever speeding again on the interstate. I think that if we had more of these tangible punishments that did not allow some people to slip by, like my mother, it might help curb the amount of people who think it is okay to bypass some laws, such as speeding. Speeding might not seem that bad, but if a car is moving faster, that means that the driver has to react quicker to an emergency stop or someone else not paying attention, leading to a more dangerous situation for everyone involved.

To become a safer driver myself, I know it is important to remind myself of the rules of the road. It is also important to remember that being distracted not only endangers myself, but it can also endanger others. Staying off of a cell phone is the biggest challenge for most people these days, including myself. When our whole entire lives are within that phone, sometimes people struggle to separate themselves from it, even for an important drive. I often have to remind myself that being attentive on the road is important, and that my phone can wait until I have safely arrived at my destination. Playing music or listening to a podcast is a great way to keep my brain engaged while I continue to pay attention to the road, so I am not tempted to end my boredom by getting on my phone.

Would recognizing that they are potentially harming someone else’s life have an effect on someone’s opinion of distracted driving? While we may never know for sure, it will always be more helpful than harmful to properly educate young students and even older people about the potential effects of distracted driving. While it may not be eliminated permanently, we have the possibility to reduce the amount of crashes and lives lost drastically, and I think that is enough proof in itself to work towards this goal with increased vigor.