Seconds on The Road

London
Nunes

Arizona
State University

March
26th, 2020

2020
Scholarship Contest

Seconds
on The Road

Seconds
while driving, that’s all it takes for lives to be taken, cars to
be flipped, and families to be broken. Why is it that we trust
ourselves to look at our phone while driving? What happens if someone
else hits us? What if that time we were looking at our phones was
used as defensive and safe driving? I think many people tend to text
and drive because they think they are the best at it, which makes it
ok for them. This however, is completely wrong no matter how “good”
they think they are at balancing driving with other tasks that
doesn’t mean other people on the road are. Defensive driving
doesn’t happen as much because of people who think like this, they
think they are supernatural and have eyes on the back of their head.
Thinking like this is what kills people, never thinking it can happen
it what most in car accidents like this will say after.

On
June 17th, 2017, me and my mother were on the way to a movie on a
friday night. To start off my mother has had a bad habit of texting
and driving since I can remember. Whenever I told her she shouldn’t
be texting and driving she would tell me, “i’m fine, i’m the
best at it, have you seen me swerve? No, that’s because I can
multitask”. That night on the way to the movie we got on the
freeway and made our way to the Harkins Movie Theater. When my mom
was about to get off the freeway one of her friends texted her and
she got her phone to reply back while switching lanes. The car in the
lane over did not have their headlights on and because of it being
dark my mom switched lanes without even looking back in the middle of
texting. The car jolted as we spun off the freeway almost hitting the
side wall. The windshield was shattered, our hearts were beating a
million miles a minute, quickly looking and evaluating each other
making sure we are okay. At that moment we both looked at each other
in fear praying with our eyes that the other driver was okay. As we
ran out of the car to the other car a million thoughts were racing
through my head. What if there is a family of 5 in the car? A
pregnant woman? Someone who is old and couldn’t endear the crashes
impact? Luckily, no one in this accident was injured, which is not
what happens in most texting and driving accidents.

After
that my mother was too embarrassed to admit she was texting and
driving, but I knew it. Because I was getting my license that year I
made sure to practice good driving habits such as putting the GPS on
before I start driving instead of during, putting my phone on silent,
and putting a playlist on before I start driving, so i’m not
tempted to pick up my phone and switch the song while i’m driving.

Since
then, whenever me and my mother drive somewhere she knows that if her
friends text her and she wants to reply to hand the phone to me in
the passenger seat so I can respond and she can focus on her driving.
Most of the time I prefer for her to charge her phone and put it in
the glove compartment while she’s driving before I even get in the
car from now on. As all my friends know, I practice the same rules
when I get into my friends car’s and I truly hope they pick up on
the habit.

Having
this experience has made me acknowledge the driving habits that I
wanted to have at the time only being 17 and new to the driving
world. I think it is easy when you are young to think you are a
multitasker and invincible. I know that the quality of my driving and
my defensive driving from those who don’t care as much are what is
important to me. Thinking about my future family and kids I want to
teach them that life can be taken from you in a heartbeat with
driving, frankly you can take someone else’s life in a heartbeat as
well. I want to be able to express how important it is to drive
defensively and tell them the story that inspired me to take more
precautions against the dangers of driving. I hope sharing this story
that could have gone a completely different way expresses the seconds
of driving that count.