Taking What’s Not Yours

“Sometimes you gotta leave in a hurry, man, what can I say?” These are my favorite lyrics from the song Taking What’s Not Yours by TV Girl, my favorite band. The song that was playing when I got into a car accident. I was driving to my job on a Thursday after school and being irresponsible, I was texting on my phone. Not just that, I was also not wearing my seatbelt and I was going around twenty miles per hour above the speed limit. Even after all those driver’s ed classes and having been warned multiple times about the dangers of texting and driving, I decided that I was going to use my phone and drive. I became a statistic that fateful Thursday. I ended up totaling my green 2009 Toyota Camry, which I affectionally named Lucy. A couple of days after the accident I experienced extremely excruciating stomach pains causing my mom to worry that they were caused by the accident which led her to rush me to the emergency room. Thankfully, it was nothing serious but that day it hit me why people drilled into me the dangers of texting and driving.

For at least a month since that fateful day, I feared to get into any vehicle. Taking the bus to school, I had to sit in the front of the bus in the seat behind the driver and stare at the road while the bus driver was driving. I could not go to work for a whole month cause I did not trust anyone to drive me. It was just home and school. I realized from that day that anyone and everyone can be just as irresponsible as I was that Thursday and be texting and driving causing them to crash into the vehicle I was driving. I could be doing everything correctly and still die because of someone else’s actions. Driving safely is like a group project but you have zero idea who your group mates are on the road.

Distracted driving is defined as doing another activity that takes the driver’s attention away from driving. Distracted driving can be split into three categories: Visual distracted driving, Manual distracted driving, and Cognitive distracted driving. Visual distracted driving is driving while doing an activity that will lead you to not having your eyes on the road. Manual distracted driving is driving while doing an activity that will lead you to not having your hands on the wheel. Cognitive distracted driving is driving while doing an activity that takes your brain and focus away from driving. Texting while driving is one that falls under all three categories and is one of the most common, if not the most common, distractions while driving.

Distracted driving impacts thousands of Americans each year. Every day, around nine people in the United States are killed in crashes that involve a distracted driver. In 2019, over three thousand people were killed and over four hundred thousand were injured in crashes that involved a distracted driver. Though one can ramble on and on about the statistics relating to distracted driving, it is not the best way to raise awareness of the dangers of distracted driving and prevent this behavior among young drivers. Numbers are just that, numbers, to the brain and are not the most effective way to get the point against distracted driving across to new drivers. Having personal experiences be the forefront of raising awareness of the dangers of distracted driving is more effective than statistics. Humans are social animals that are built on empathy and hearing a story about someone getting hurt by a distracted driver triggers the part of the brain that deals with emotion and this emotion link to distracted driving is a bigger deterrent than statistics as they do not trigger the emotional center of the brain.

Preventing distracted drivers starts with looking at older drivers. Seeing parents driving while distracted can lead to new drivers following in their parents’ footsteps. Encouraging older drivers to prevent distracted driving will lead to new drivers who observe the older drivers not drive while distracted. Another important way to prevent distracted driving is positive peer pressure. Teens are very heavily influenced by other teens and their friends. Having other teens encourage their friends to not drive while distracted will affect the social part of their brain which is very sensitive to rejection, especially for young teens.

While driving, there are many programmable signs to tell information to drivers. These signs are usually used to give information on traffic or whether roads are closed but these signs can be used to remind drivers about the dangers of distracted driving. Occasionally, these signs will have a joke to catch your attention. Having one of those signs with a joke relating to distracted driving and then bringing attention to the issue will give young drivers a reminder to not drive while distracted. Reminders are the best way to deter young drivers from distracted driving.

A lot of phones have sensors that can detect the speed it is traveling at. Usually this sensor, a lot of phones can put the phone on Do Not Disturb to prevent distractions and hopefully prevent people from using their phone while they are driving. Implementing this onto more phones and making it a requirement for a phone to have this option is a way to prevent and make it harder to drive while distracted.

Distracted driving is a serious issue that leads to hundreds of thousands of accidents, injuries, and deaths in the United States each year. Young and new drivers are especially vulnerable, as they may not yet fully understand the risks involved. The way we teach new drivers about the dangers of distracted driving can be improved by sharing personal anecdotes, applying peer pressure, and using other methods. With effort from many people—educators, parents, lawmakers, and even technology developers—there is hope that, in the future, accidents caused by distracted driving will become a thing of the past.