Carelessness Kills

Carelessness Kills

I’ve always thought of driving as operating a one-ton, lethal metal device. I know that sounds like a morbid analogy, but it’s part of the reason why I encourage the people around me to avoid distracted driving. My family has unfortunately experienced an emergency situation due to careless driving. My uncle was hit by a distracted driver in 2008 where he almost lost his life, was in a coma, was on a ventilator, his brain was swollen, he had years of rehabilitation, and still deals with the repercussions of the accident today in 2020. Distracted driving was the reported cause of death of 3,450 people in 2016, and an estimated 391,000 drivers were injured in distracted driving crashes in 2017. Unfortunately those numbers are rapidly increasing due to the dependence on cell phones for navigation and contact reasons within recent years, according to CBS news. I believe that if more personal commercials and videos were shown on TV and during drivers education, drivers would develop an importance to not carelessly drive. When I say more personal advertisements, I mean portraying a situation that is likely relatable to a large audience. Such as showcasing a situation where someone’s grandparents are murdered in a distracted driving accident and showing the family’s reaction to their loved one’s death. Another situation that could be portrayed is a video where a teenager has excellent grades and is overall an outstanding person, but texts and drives and accidentally murders a pedestrian and is thrown in prison for the rest of their life. Now I understand these are extreme situations, but I feel these specific situations would give the driver a personal connection to the videos and encourage them to drive safely and be more aware of their surroundings so they can avoid the situations that are portrayed.

Sources Cited-

https://www.thezebra.com/research/distracted-driving-statistics/#:~:text=Distracted%20driving%20was%20the%20reported,the%20United%20States%20in%202017

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pedestrian-deaths-america-highest-level-30-years-study-today-2020-02-27/