Our Distance from Distracted Driving

Our Distance from Distracted Driving

Elena Amonette

There are those moments in life when you’re sitting around the dinner table and your mom brings up bad news. In case you haven’t heard, a kid my age went cliff jumping and is now quadriplegic. A friend of a friend just had a miscarriage. It’s really unfortunate that my classmate’s dad has Alzheimer’s. And you just feel so disconnected from the reality of their situation because you are not them and you’ve never been them and you ignore the terror it ignites in you because you hope to God that you never will be them.

I will embody all of our mothers at the dinner table for a moment. I know a girl who is blonde, and in a way, she seems like sunshine. She has- no. She had a brother. And he was good like her and he loved everyone and she was at church camp when they called. I heard about when they called. It was a tree, and it was quick. And it was most likely distracted driving and the other boys are fine, don’t worry. And they took her away to her new life where everything was falling apart at the seams and that halo light that always followed her around was dimmed just a little.

And it’s like life slows down when you think about it. Because I think about how I throw my seconds away carelessly, and he didn’t know they were his last. I reheat my leftovers in the microwave, and impatience makes my twenty seconds stretch into infinity. But he didn’t have enough time to stop the car. I do planks and my stomach hurts and, man, why is twenty seconds not over yet? But I bet that for her, that time seems too short when you no longer have it.

By November, it will be four years since his death. She is now as old as he was then. She continues to grow and will begin to experience that which he could not. Pictures of her reflect a life well lived, but his now symbolize a life too short. Framed on the walls, his youth is forever unchanging.

A week ago, I hit a cement pole while trying to park quickly. My car was scuffed, but I was okay. He wasn’t even the driver, but he’s not okay. Life is an unfair roll of the dice, and some people get away with just a scuffed car. Some people lose even if they are good and love everyone and have sisters who seem like sunshine. 1.35 million people lose their lives in car crashes every day. But he is not just a statistic. This is why it is so important to fight against distracted driving.

If we can spread awareness about distracted driving and educate our youth on traffic safety rules then we can create a new generation of better drivers, making our roads a safer place. Simple rules, such as remembering who goes first at an intersection, could end up saving a life or at least preventing injury or damages.

As for me personally, I keep myself in check by remembering the times when my moments of inattention could have gotten me or my loved ones hurt. We can all do a better job at putting more importance on our driving by knowing what we stand to lose. The precious seconds we now throw away carelessly. The people who might be waiting for us to come home. The person sitting in your passenger seat. We must be vigilant about safety on the roads. Ignore the buzz of your phone—or better yet, silence the phone.

Knowing the rules of driving is important, and driving education plays a critical role in reducing these statistics. But more important than even knowing the rules of driving is knowing the severity of the consequences of our actions on the road. We must force ourselves to dive into our terror and acknowledge the possibility that the dinnertime sob stories could be us or, even worse, could be at the hands of us. So what I urge you to do is to remember her and remember him. Put yourself in their shoes and feel their heartbreak. Think about the huge responsibility of driving and hold others accountable when they don’t. Let’s not distance ourselves from the issue of distracted driving. Let’s make it personal. Let’s bring the issue as close to our hearts as it is for them. For her, for him, for a safer world, this is the least we can do.