Distracted Driving and Prevention in New Drivers

Hannah
Bondy

2020
Drivers ed Contest

[email protected]

476
Edinburgh Ct. Saline, MI

Distracted
Driving and Prevention in New Drivers

As
overstated as it might feel, the biggest thing that I as a driver
have both experienced and witnessed as a problem is distracted
driving with technology. According to the National Safety Council,
one out of every four car accidents in the United States is caused by
texting and driving, and overall cell phones lead to approximately
1.6 million crashes each year. While drivers’ education classes do
try and cover the subject, I don’t think that the matter is really
discussed beyond the general warning they issue of “don’t.”
There needs to be a much more open talk with driving students, not
only on the dangers but how to help them stop from falling into the
trap of looking at their phone “for one sec.” It
takes between four and five seconds to read a text. If you’re
traveling at 55 miles-per-hour, then you can cover the length of a
football field in that time. During that time, a car could try to
change lanes, there could be a sudden stop, or a pedestrian could
step out. All of those things can become deadly to someone on their
phone and those around them. There
are so many resources that driving students should learn about to
prevent these accidents from occuring before they get on the road.
There are phone settings that they can activate when they start
driving that silence their calls and texts or apps that they can
download that will reward them for not texting while driving. We
should educate driving students on the hands-free car settings that
are now available so that they aren’t learning that stuff once
they’re already on the road. I have been in a car accident before,
unrelated to technology (just slippery roads), and there is nothing
as scary as losing control of your car and feeling the impact of a
crash shake you. I was lucky enough to have been alone in my car at
the time and it was a one-car accident but I can’t imagine being
responsible for hurting somebody else if another car had been near me
on the road when my car slipped. That is something that no kid should
be dealing with and education is the best prevention for that. Every
kid at this point has probably seen someone drive irresponsibly
before and knows what it looks like. What they don’t always see are
the consequences of those actions and how scary it can be when you
are the one in the wrecked car. There are so many ways that accidents
like that can be prevented: using the hands-free options in the car
if available, have a passenger or bag hold the phone out of reach
from the driver, use an app to block incoming messages that might
distract the driver, or put the phone on silent. So many accidents,
especially the deadly ones, can be avoided when the driver
understands the risks of distracted driving and is prepared to handle
it.