“The Lasting Impact”

Portland Pie Company. September 24th. My mom’s birthday. My phone ringing and ringing. The panic of my best friend’s voice. This day sticks in my mind as a painful one. Not the kind of pain where it hurts because it is happening to you, but the kind of pain where it hurts to see others hurt. September 24th was the day that the small town of Gorham, Maine was changed.

I was out to dinner with my family, celebrating my mom’s birthday. She was getting annoyed with me because my phone was vibrating over and over, a clear violation of our family rule: “no phones at the dinner table”. I snuck away to the bathroom, and called my best friend. She told me through tears that two boys from our town passed away in a car accident. One of the boys was a brother of another friend of mine. Fast forward a couple weeks, a couple friends and I head to the funeral of one of the boys. Seeing a once happy family, the light in their eyes gone, with grief painted on their faces. Gorham is a small town, so everyone knows a bit about everyone. As the town mourned these students, a question on everyone’s mind is how? How did this happen?

The thing about tragedy is that you never expect it to happen to you. You don’t wear a helmet because you won’t fall, until you do fall. No need for sunscreen because you won’t get skin cancer, until you need surgery to remove the skin cancer 40 years later. With car accidents, it happens in a split second. The choice to text and drive, or reach for your purse in the backseat, all happen in a few moments. Those few moments can have lasting impacts on the driver, but also people around them. The impact today from the September 24th crash in my town, is my best friend, still reminded of him from everyday activities. She plans to get a tattoo in his memory this month, as a reminder that he’s still around her. Seeing one of the boy’s parents, their old smiles permanently faded. Soccer players dedicate games in their honor. Their memory is still very present in the community, even though it’s been over a year later.

As the number of car accident deaths increases, it’s never been more clear that change is needed. So what needs to change? Everyone has seen the commercials that say “don’t text and drive”, or the films showing the families of people that have passed from a car accident, and the big banner in my school displaying “one text or call could wreck it all”. Although all of those efforts to spread awareness are beneficial, I think a better way is starting with the root of the problem.

I remember growing up and watching my dad constantly text and drive, no matter where he was going, or who was in the car. My siblings and I would tell him over and over to stop texting, but he was a lost cause. The funniest part to me was that he wasn’t sending important messages, he was scrolling through Twitter. I always wondered why Twitter was a higher priority than keeping our car between the lanes on the interstate. This planted a mindset into my siblings and I, where a phone was necessary to drive. In order to lower the number of car accident deaths, parents need to show and demonstrate that distractions have no place while driving. Examples of this could include never texting while driving, never reaching for things that aren’t close by, and asking the kids to adjust the radio or other technology in the car. This creates a mindset over time, that the driver is there to drive, and drive only.

Another strategy for preventing car accidents could be technology in the car that locks the phone in a compartment for the drive. There could be a compartment near the glove compartment, or near the dashboard, to lock the phone in. Once the phone is locked in there, the car will be able to be put into drive. Even though this method is more extreme, it prevents phones from playing a part in any distracted driving.

Changing how parents act in the car with their children, can prevent those children in the future from texting and driving, and choosing to give into distractions. As the September 24th crash still rests in my mind from time to time, I can see how a whole town comes together during a tragedy. It is time to come together again, this time for prevention. Although these methods can’t bring back the victims from my town, it could prevent the lasting impacts on another town.