More than just drunk driving.

Impaired driving can be many things. I didn’t know this and when I first started driving even though I had taken drivers ed. In fact I didn’t learn more about it until I took a safety course later. In this course I found out how tired driving can be just as dangerous as a person who had a few drinks. This opened my mind to the possibility that impaired driving is more than just drinking. It could be drinking though, it could also be tiredness, or distraction like looking at phones or even conversation. I’ll take you through a story of each.

           When I was younger my mom told me this devastating story about drunk driving. While I have made the mistake of getting behind the wheel under the influence this story saved me from hundreds of other times I would have. My mom had a sister when she was younger. Her name was Pammy and when Pammy was 2 years old, they were playing on the street in front of their home. A young man had just graduated and had maybe two beers, but it was enough for him to be impaired. That day he hit what would have been my aunt and she died. The guilt that he must have felt is what I grew up imagining and the devastation it caused. My grandma sat in a chair by the glass door in the back staring for months. She couldn’t bring herself to clean off the smudge marks from Pammy’s little hands left there. The last little bit of Pammy she had.

               When I was a teenager right before I learned how to drive me and my sister were on the road to Texas. We were all driving together as a family since she was going to get married to her long-distance boyfriend. She had been driving for some time, and I was supposed to be keeping her up. I was tired myself and fell asleep. When I woke up the car was flipping and all I remember was the dream state of reaching my hands up for balance and counting one two three flips. She had fallen asleep, and it took next to no time at all in the desert for her to hit the ditch with one of her wheels and consequently the car was totaled. We miraculously were safe, but it gave me a good lesson in the importance of safety belts. We all had ours and the tv did too, so that it didn’t harm us in the crash. Later in life I started falling asleep while driving myself and remembering that I was able to understand the gravity of the situation and change how I did things.

               Right when I started driving, I was in the car with a friend. We were talking and laughing and so I was very distracted. We were driving on a road that didn’t have any stop lights for several miles, but we had just reached Oregon City and with it it’s first traffic light. I was looking at him and the next thing I know I look up and there’s a stop light and I’m not quick enough. I hit the person in front of me who stopped first, and it totaled my vehicle. Fortunately for me the other vehicle didn’t get that bad of damage. I did however get a reminder when I drove around for the next year or so with an open front end.

               Those stories are how I think that there can be a reduction in impaired driving. While it can’t be removed completely it can be reduced. If it’s made personal people can imagine the consequences and choose differently. While I knew from a young age from the stories my mom told me how important it is to not drink and drive, I learned the hard was the importance of paying attention as well as of getting plenty of sleep.

               I think one way to help this is to send the message out of what all distracted driving entails. I know that I’ve seen plenty of anti-texting ads. Tiredness can be more advertised. The message can be expanded further. When I got a ticket for speeding, they had me take a class. I also wonder if maybe there could be classes for people that get more than one accident in a certain period. The commonality I have seen with people I know who have gotten into more than one accident a year is they had untreated ADHD. This is also another thing that could be a detriment. I’m not sure what the answer to that would be. I just know that is an avenue that could be explored further as something that could lead to distracted driving.