The Unspoken Repercussions of Distracted Driving

My
name is Will, and I have seen the impact a serious car accident can
have on a person firsthand. Several years ago, on the way home from
her work, my mom was T-boned by a distracted driver. This accident
left my mom’s car totaled, and my mom with a permanently dislocated
disc in her spine. Because of someone else’s selfishness and
ignorance, my mom has to live every day in pain with little to no
hope of ever escaping it. Obviously, she tried scouring the web for
possible surgeries or other procedures that could ease her pain, but
all of them were expensive and not worth the risk. My mom was forced
to retire and now has to live a life of constant agony because
someone else decided that using their phone was a priority over their
and my mom’s well-being.

Driving
is already extremely dangerous in the sense that one wrong move could
result in the loss of one or more lives, or at best several injuries.
This is what people, especially younger people, need to understand.
Driving is not a right, it is a privilege; and with that privilege
comes unprecedented levels of responsibility. When you get behind the
wheel, you put yourself and others at risk, and by willingly
distracting yourself with your phone or anything else, you are only
increasing the chance that something awful will happen. Doing
something so simple as just turning your ringer or phone off while
driving could save countless lives.

So,
how can we stop accidents like these from happening? Well, it needs
to start with the education system. While a lot of driving schools
may think that just telling kids not to text and drive is enough,
they’re wrong. When I took my driving classes, my teacher read an
article about two girls, the first being a former student of his, and
the latter was her younger sister. The former student was driving her
younger sister home, and was extremely drunk. To summarize what
happened, the driver drove off the road and crashed into a telephone
pole, killing her instantly. The younger sister fortunately survived,
but was traumatized by the event: she reported that she was stuck in
the back of the car, forced to watch her dead sister until emergency
personnel arrived. It is because of this story that I will NEVER get
in a car with a drunk driver, let alone drive while under the
influence.

This
story was extremely difficult to listen to, but it was necessary to
ensure that none of us ever made the same mistake. These stories are
definitely out there, so it is the education system’s job to find
them and inform kids on the potential consequences of not paying
attention to the road.

By
putting some of these ideas into action and educating kids about the
unspoken repercussions of distracted driving, we can guarantee that
less kids will make this mistake and make the road a safer place for
everyone.