In The Driver’s Seat

Brandon Burton

November 30, 2020

Distracted Driving

Driving is essential in today’s world. It is the most efficient means of transportation at our disposal, which allows us to get groceries, go to work, and even go on drives to distress. However, as Uncle Ben once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Some people abuse the powers that come with the ability to drive, resulting in tragedy. Today I will be addressing the abusing of driving, and how to prevent tragedy on the roadways.

For starters, distracted driving is the number one cause of accidents on the road. Distracted driving can be best defined as driving while doing another activity that takes your attention away from driving. According to the CDC, distracted driving has taken 29,472 lives throughout 2010-2018, averaging about 3275 deaths annually. Drivers that typically practice distracted driving are in the age group of 16-29. They drive dangerously as they believe that their skills are good enough to multitask while at the wheel.

Death on the road can be prevented easily through multiple methods. The first method is retaining information taught in driver education, instead of learning enough to pass the exam. It is very tempting to just cram for the written test, however, a student doesn’t learn anything that way. Taking the time to go through the course will give students a true understanding of how the roads work. Additionally, practice on the road makes a good driver. You can know the textbook definition of how to parallel park, however, until you go and parallel park yourself, you can never become a good driver.

Secondly, drivers need to focus solely on driving. To put how dangerous dividing your attention away from the road is, I’ll give a basic physics lesson. The average distracted driver looks at their phone for about 5 seconds, if that driver is traveling at 55 miles per hour, they will travel the length of a football field. That is 60 feet a second that they travel without looking at their surroundings.

I have personal experience with distracted driving, through family. I have seen every driving eligible member of my family practice distracted driving, and have been in numerous accidents because of these decisions. As a whole, my family has been good about not driving while distracted. I started driving over a year ago, and I am able to say that I have not practice distracted driving, nor do I intend on practicing it either. I just put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” mode, and I put on a playlist that I like to listen to so that I am not tempted to grab my phone. I would say to my fellow driving community, we all need to stop getting on our phones while on the road, it just might save a life.