Invincible Behind the Wheel? Not so Much

Independence, freedom, and invincibility. These feelings are what many teenagers experience once they get what they have long wanted: their driver’s license. I felt the same way, so excited about getting to drive myself to school and my friend’s houses, all without being burdened by my parents’ schedules. However, I made a mistake. A common mistake that kills over three thousand people a year: I got in a car crash because I was a distracted driver.¹ Thankfully, my accident only included my car and the mailbox, but it shook me deeply. My brothers, the radio, my overconfidence in my abilities as a driver and trying to get to school on time sent me crashing into the mailbox, shattering my illusion of invincibility as a driver.

According to the CDC, there are three types of distraction in the car, visual (your eyes are not focused on the road), manual (your body isn’t in the proper driving position) and cognitive (you aren’t thinking about driving). (CITE) Of these three, I was visually and cognitively distracted when I hit the mailbox. I was in shock for the next few days, dreading driving the car because I realized I wasn’t driving as safely as I had thought. I had the realization that while my driver’s license brought me independence and freedom, it was also dangerous if I was distracted while at the wheel. I was very lucky in two ways: my accident was in my driveway and my parents repeatedly extolled the dangers of using phones while driving. Since then, I do my very best to eliminate distractions in the car by staying mentally vigilant while driving, never letting a conversation become a distraction and never touching my phone while driving. Because of this and an increased awareness of the dangers of distraction, I have been accident free in the four years since I hit the mailbox.

Educating young drivers is an important way of decreasing traffic accident deaths and injuries. Having a mandated or greatly incentivized driver’s education program is important because it may be the last opportunity to seriously discuss these issues before they are driving. There should be curricular units on distracted driving that include segments about alcohol and drug use, phone use and passenger distraction, among others. I found the CDC’s three types of distraction useful in thinking about how to keep myself distraction free behind the wheel. If the consequences for not following the commonsense driving rules are plainly stated, a teenager much like me (who never got the opportunity to take a driver’s education class) should be able to see that the risk is not worth it. If I had taken a driver’s education class, I believe that it would have prepared me better to be a safe and conscious citizen on the road. This matters because distracted drivers aren’t just dangers to themselves, they are also dangers to everyone else on the road.

When I was a senior in high school, I participated in a drunk driving crash simulation. Everyone from my high school and neighboring high schools were brought over to two crashed cars, where eight of us were assigned roles in the simulated crash. My role was as a dead body, my torso thrust through the windshield with fake blood all over me. As my classmates watched, the first responders, police, firefighters, and coroner did their jobs as if the simulated crash was real. My classmates who had survived the crash screamed and cried as they were rescued from the wreck, and I was pronounced dead and taken away in a hearse. It was a powerful experience, one that I remember I had many conversations about with my classmates, which extended discussion of the topic further than if it had been taught in a classroom. These kinds of demonstrations should happen more often because they are powerful reminders of our fragileness and how dangerous our transportation system can be.

In the end, it is completely worth the work to educate our young drivers about the dangers of distracted driving. While it would be very difficult to eliminate driving deaths, there are things we can do to decrease the number of deaths and injuries. We can require driver’s education classes that focus on how to be a safe and undistracted driver. We can run ad campaigns that discourage using cellphones and pass laws that ban the use of cellphones while driving. We can run crash simulations to increase awareness about crashes that happen because of alcohol or distracted driving. If we continue this push, we can keep our communities safer and live better lives because of it.

Citations:

“Distracted Driving.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 26, 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/distracted_driving/index.html#:~:text=Anything%20that%20takes%20your%20attention,few%20examples%20of%20distracted%20driving.