(With)Hold the Phone!

(With)Hold
the Phone

My
mom told me after I entered my freshman year of high school, I would
know at least one person who would die in a driving related accident
before I would graduate. I remember staring at her with complete
disbelief. No way could that ever happen, not to someone I knew. All
my friends were safe and responsible. Now thinking back on this
conversation as a senior, almost ready to graduate, I wish that she
had been wrong.

Prom
is supposed to be the “night of nights” for all high schoolers.
It is for some, the pinnacle of the high school experience. Getting
dressed up with your friends and going to a somewhat cheesy dance,
but it’s about being together and having fun. My junior prom was
everything I had hoped for in a night however, the fantasy abruptly
ended the next morning. Upon waking up, I discovered that while I had
been asleep, many of my friends had spent their after hours of prom,
in a hospital waiting room praying for the life of a dear friend who
had crashed his car on his way home. Some believe it was the weather,
some believe it was suicide, some believe it was distracted driving,
but it didn’t matter anymore because here was a boy who, 24 hours
earlier had been the life of the party, was now clinging to his life.
After almost 2 days of being on life support, this boy that so many
of my friends had cherished and loved, was pronounced brain dead. It
was a gut-wrenching loss for the entire community.

I
don’t believe it should take the loss of an amazing and funny and
kind human being, for people to understand just how short life is or
how crucial driving skills are. That being said, many of my friends
have taken his death as a powerful reminder of how to live their
lives, including how they drive. Technology has become an ever
pressing existence in our lives. Whether we are 85 or 16, all of us
have some sort of device that is constantly calling for our
attention. As a teenager, I can speak on behalf of just how difficult
it is to resist that temptation of responding to that one Snapchat
from my best friend or a quick text from my mom, but in order to
decrease deaths on the road, we must work to decrease distractions.

In
drivers ed, videos of instruction on “not texting and
driving” are out of date. The truth is, texting is just a small
portion of the distractions our phones can cause on the road. As we
increase our social media circles we are increasing our distractions
on the road. I am by no means saying get rid of social media, but
know the time and the place. Driving on the road is neither the time
nor the place. Another key factor in distracted driving is our music.
Everyone loves music and more importantly everyone loves their OWN
music. Younger generations are shifting away from the usage of radios
and towards auxiliary ports and bluetooth sound systems. The problem
with this is we make excuses to check our phones when that one song
comes on that we absolutely cannot stand. It takes less than two
seconds of our eyes off the road to get into a car crash. For many,
that car crash can be detrimental to life.

Like
many of my friends, I am guilty of the music changing distraction. I
listen to my music through Spotify, and I hope that one day the app
might include a voice automated command where you can pause play or
skip your music without having to check a device. However, until
then, I have learned that if changing a bad song will cost me my life
behind the wheel, then I will gladly listen to that bad song any day.
I hope that as technology advances, they will also create more
limitations to their use if they can detect car movement. Restricting
distractions on the road can truly save lives, technology, in my
opinion, is just one of the major distractions more and more new
drivers are having to face.

When
I am behind the wheel, my focus is to get from point A to point B as
safely as possible. I cannot control the actions of others, but I can
control my own actions to ensure my safety. I turn off my
notifications while I am driving. If I listen to music, I make sure
it is a playlist that I will not not need to check my phone for any
reason. If for whatever reason I need to check my phone to call my
parents, I always pull over to a safe area where I can put my car in
park before talking. A lot of this is common sense, but a lot of
people do not use this common sense and not only put their own lives
in danger, but the lives of other drivers in danger. So guys, just
put the phone down.