Distracted Driving and ways to fix it

Distracted Driving and ways to fix it

Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, there are many students that drive with unsafe habits. I have even seen it firsthand, with some of my friends and cousins pulling out their phones while driving, changing songs and sending texts. Each time, I’ve reminded them to put their devices away but unfortunately that doesn’t stop them from doing the same, dangerous thing when I’m not there. Over and over again, I hear stories of teens and young adult drivers getting distracted by texts or calls from their friends and getting into dangerous, life-threatening accidents. They’re not only putting themselves at risk, but also putting another driver who is likely following the law at risk as well. But the thing is, I truly believe that with a better education system many problems can be solved, including this one.

Even though our society in the United States is heavily based around cars and roads due to the sheer size of the country, there simply isn’t enough education around driving built into the average high school curriculum. With a good education system, I firmly believe that we can fight deaths due to distracted driving, as well as other irresponsible driving habits. Eighty-nine percent of United States adults have driver’s licenses; given such a large amount does, I would expect there to be a much stronger emphasis on making sure that students around the country know how to be safe when they drive around, but there isn’t. Now, if you ask anyone around the country, they’ll tell you that distracted driving is bad. But even with people knowing that it’s bad to drive with phones in their hands, teenagers keep using their devices when they’re not supposed to. That’s why having a dedicated class, or even just a unit in a general education class focused on real, behavioral changes in the habits of future drivers could help ensure that in the long term, young drivers would be able to not only know that they need to drive safely, like they already do, but also begin to consistently apply that knowledge into their everyday driving habits, keeping them safe, as well as the people and drivers around them safe.

Along with this, I believe that mobile phones nowadays are just too addicting to be safe to have in cars. Everything that a current day smartphone is meant to do is focused on keeping your attention longer and making sure that we are thinking about them as much as possible. Especially with social media companies making money based on getting your attention and keeping it so that they can show more advertisements for longer and make more money. The current addictiveness that comes with smartphones is just too unsafe. Way that notifications work abuses human psychology to make money. The little buzz when someone gets a notification, or the little red bubbles that show when someone texted are little things that we’ve come to expect, but are tools that smartphone manufacturers and social media companies abuse to get and keep our attention.

To combat this, regulation on the way smartphones are allowed to get your attention in order to make sure they’re less addictive and less prone to distracting a young driver, would help make sure that students are less likely to want to check their phones when they should be keeping their eyes on the road. That regulation would keep social media companies at bay, and would not only help teenage drivers, but the general public in fighting social media addictions. Combined with a better overall education on driving, I believe that distracted driving caused by phones would significantly decrease.

But not all the problems can be solved by others. Sometimes oneself and the people they’re closest to are the most helpful at changing their habits for the better. I know that constantly keeping myself in check, imagining that my grandma is in the car with me, helps me avoid falling into the trap of speeding and driving distracted. And while others are driving unsafe, I always make sure to let them know that I feel uncomfortable, which ends up causing them to slow down and drive safer.

Overall, too many driving accidents are caused by distracted driving due to smartphones, something that could be avoided. I believe that a better driver’s education and more strict laws on the addictiveness of mobile phones would help make moves towards solving the issue of dangerous driving habits, especially distracted driving from texting or using social media when students should be focusing on the road ahead of them. Overall, even if policies like this save one life, such changes would be worth it, so they should definitely be at least considered by policymakers all over the world.