The World of Driving

What is driving? Driving is a way of transportation, to get from
point A to point B. Although now a days it has become more so
something to do to pass time instead of a necessity. Back in the day
it was used by adults to get back and forth from work and the
occasional family trip, but it wasn’t a given for everyone. When my
parents were kids, they weren’t just handed keys to their own car,
they rode their bike and if they were lucky, they could take the car
every now and then. In today’s world the majority of teenagers are
handed the privilege to drive, in fact it has become so popular that
kids have gotten to the point where they expect a car when they
become of age and the parents feel that it is expected of them to
provide one for their kids. Many teenagers are unaware of the risk
and the consequences that come with the privilege of driving, which
has caused the road to become so unsafe. I am lucky enough to have
had the opportunity to become educated about the road and its risks.
I’ve grown up with a father who is one of the head traffic engineers
at the local PennDOT office, Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation, because his job is reading accident reports,
researching human behavior on the road, building roads, etc. he
tries his best to educate my brother and I on the dangers of the road
in hopes of lowering the chances of him reading our names on an
accident report.

One of the
biggest dangerous on the road is technology. As society continues to
advance so does the technology. Although technology advancement isn’t
the dangerous part so to speak, it’s the users of that technology
that have become so dependent on it to the point that they believe
they cannot live without it. A lot of people cannot even go a
five-minute car ride without picking up their phone. The common
misconception is that being on your phone is dangerous because you
are looking at your screen texting or holding it in your hand while
you are talking on the phone. So many people put it on speaker while
their driving or hook it up to their car because that’s safer,
right? Well you’re wrong, experiments show that talking on the
phone even when it’s hands off is just as dangerous as texting the
person. Although many people claim to be a “multitasker” studies
of the brain show that it is physically impossible to focus on more
than one thing at a time. In order to focus on one thing your brain
shifts focus from the other area you claim to be “multitasking”
on. So, in order to talk and drive or text and drive your brain is
constantly shifting back and forth without you realizing it which
makes you less apt to see the kid running after his ball that went
onto the road ahead of you. Another misconception is that talking on
the phone is the same as talking to a passenger, right? Well you’re
wrong again, talking on the phone is in fact way more dangerous then
talking to passenger. When traveling with another person and carrying
on a conversation you have two sets of eyes on the road which makes
you more apt to see something happening before it happens. Often when
things get chaotic on the road and requires a little more
concentration the passenger realizes subconsciously as well, and the
conversation comes to a pause until the situation comes to stop and
the conversation can resume. Where as the person you are on the phone
with cannot see when the road ahead of you gets more complicated and
requires more attention so they keep talking and you as well continue
to talk because you think you can “handle” it or as some say
“multitask”. Not only that but subconsciously your brain is
constantly trying to picture that person that you are on the phone
with without you even knowing which is one more thing taking away
from your attention on the road. So do yourself a favor to make the
road safer for you and others on the road put your phone away,
minimize how much you change your controls whether its music or the
air conditioning, and if you really need to talk to someone that bad
pull over.

I have never
personally been in an accident, but I have read many accident
reports. I’ve seen that often; a cell phone was found at the
incident or the driver was under the influence. If we better educated
teenagers on the consequences of driving under the influence of drugs
or alcohol or using their cell phone while behind the wheel, we would
be able to make the road a safer place for everyone.