My safe driving habits

Itzel
A. Gonzalez Chavez

Dangerous
driving habits amongst teenagers have become one of the most common
things in today’s society. These habits have caused many deaths,
and we cannot seem to learn from it. Personally, I am terrified of
car accidents, I have had some friends who have died because of
dangerous driving habits and this has led me to develop this fear.
When I drive, I try to take many precautions before I start my trip.
Our phones have a tool called driving mode, there are also many apps
that their only objective is to block our phones completely when it
detects that we are in a car or that our speed has increased rapidly,
however, with just the click of a button, “I am not driving”, it
is easily deactivated. I think it is a great tool, we just have to
have the discipline to not click that button while we are behind the
wheel. 

 

When
driving we should not have any type of distractions, our phones being
the main one, I think it is a good idea to turn off our phones or at
least put them in silent mode without vibrator activated, either of
these options help decrease the chances of being distracted by any
sound this device may create. However, teenagers, myself included,
have an addiction to these devices and most of us cannot help the
urge of not checking it frequently, even when we know for a fact that
there are no important notifications for us to check. A possible
solution to this can be eliminating this distraction completely,
before we start driving we can set up and prepare anything we need to
and as soon as we are done with it put it away in a place where we
cannot see it or reach it. Many of the cars used nowadays come with
many different gadgets to improve our security, one of these gadgets
is being able to connect our phones to the car, this way, if we get
calls we can answer them without even looking at our phones, with
just the click of a button placed on the steering wheel, we can
easily answer a phone call and easily hang up also. Some cars even
read our text messages for us, but do not let this be a distraction
for you, it is just a preview of the messages, not a sign that you
are required to reply to it right then and there. Social media and
text messages are not the only reason why people get into car
accidents, many of these are caused because of music. Everyone enjoys
listening to music while driving, we all have different reasons to
why, while some do it to not be so nervous when driving, others do it
to decrease their stress level, there are endless reasons. Many of
these accidents are caused because people are distracted looking for
a radio station that they like, skipping songs, changing playlists or
even skipping ads. The solution I found to this problem is having a
favorites playlist, this way you have all the music you like in one
place. If you use the radio make sure ads do not bother you, apps
like Spotify, pandora, YouTube, etc. Often play ads in between the
songs and videos because that’s the way they make money, so to
prevent ads disturbing you while you drive you can pay for the
premium service in any of these apps or download your own music. Make
sure you set up the music before you start driving and then put away
your phone. If you have a passenger with you maybe you can ask this
person to be in charge of the music, replying to texts and answering
calls, but they should not let you use your phone while you are
behind the wheel. 

These
solutions to dangerous driving habits can save your life and your
passenger’s lives. In my opinion they are good precautions to take
because they might be able to help teen deaths decrease worldwide.