The Importance of Safe Driving!

Merissa Chu

DRIVE SAFE!!

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! The ringing of your cellphone rattled the cup holder at a fingertips’ reach away from you. The screen lights up with notifications. Is it my friend? Did he just like my picture? Who just texted me? The desperation to know is overwhelming and you pick up the phone. A fatal move. Seconds of distractions turn into irreparable damage. All of a sudden you hear blaring of a horn and by the time you look back up to focus on the road it’s too late. Everything becomes black around you. Nearly 1.25 million people are killed in car accidents each year. That means 3,287 deaths occur per day from dangerous driving. What seems like only a second, is enough time for irreversible mistakes behind the wheel.

The rise of social media and the increase in technology has created habits to always check our phones. The ring, buzz, and the screen lighting up on our phones triggers the habit to check notifications. This distraction is deadly, but it can be reduced and even eliminated to making driving safer.

When teenagers first learn how to drive common education for learners permits only tell them “not to text and drive”. But everyone knows that if you tell a teenager not to do something, they are likely going to throw caution to the wind. What new teen drivers need in their driving education is the truth, the gore, and tears of losing a loved one at the hands of a driver who chose to text and drive, killing an innocent life. Showing the consequences of mistakes, it more powerful than simply telling a teenager to not text or use social media while driving.

Safe driving tips such as turning off your phone’s vibration, keeping the phone out of sight and out of reach are all bad solutions because they create other problems. Keeping a teenager’s phone out of sight and thus out of mind, does not make the phone disappear. The distraction is still there and the desire to check the phone is not mitigated as much as one might think. At a light or a standstill, the driver no doubt will access the phone thinking that even though the car is stopped, or traffic has subsided the environment has become safe. Every day 1,000 crashes occur while cars are stopped at a red light. The solution to the problem is not telling teenagers that there are times while you are behind the wheel that is safer than others. The message that should be preached is that driving is always unsafe when you are behind the wheel.

The most effective way to combat dangerous driving habits is to fight technology with technology! In the rising age of technological advancements even the most basic car models come with hands-off blue tooth and programs where the driver can receive their messages from their phone without having to remove their hands from the wheel and or removing their eyes from the road. Teens can sync their phones to their cars Bluetooth allowing the system to read their messages aloud and allowing the driver to answer out loud to messages. Bluetooth connection allows teenagers to still continue their conversations but in a much safer way.