Name: Zoey EliZAbeth Zahradka
From: Park Hills, MO
Votes: 0
Distractions:
A Deadly Nuisance
By:
Zoey Zahradka
When
I was younger, I always remembered being in a vehicle with what I
thought should be a responsible adult. Even though I knew that they
had so much power by simply being behind the wheel of a vehicle, they
seemed to be careless and reckless. Despite who they were, there has
always been some sort of distraction. The aberrations would include a
cellular device, snacks or drinks, smoking, other people, animals,
GPS device, etc. Instead of getting ready before hitting the road or
stopping when something was important enough, they would just take
care of it while driving. They would act so confident in their
driving skills that they thought it would be okay to multitask. What
I soon learned is that not a single person is good enough at
multitasking to safely drive while doing anything else that distracts
from the road.
Now that I am
old enough to take the responsibility of driving myself, I learned
very quickly how easy it is to get distracted while driving and how
important it was to ignore those disturbances. First, you have to
decide how urgent something is or if it can wait until you reach a
stop on your trip. Next, if it is urgent and cannot wait, then you
have to take the responsibility of stopping to tend to it. Though, if
you decipher that it can wait, then have someone else in the car to
remove the interference, but if you do not have a passenger who can
do that then do your best to ignore it completely. Lastly, one has to
learn to stop the interruption before even beginning the journey.
There are many tools that you can use to remove the distraction such
as do not disturb on your phone, putting in a place that you cannot
see or hear the disturbance, having a passenger take care of it, etc.
I have been in
an accident once before. The accident occurred on a road trip to
Kansas City for a concert with my significant other and sister. We
were coming to the end of our trip while exiting off the highway onto
a busy street. There was lots of traffic on the exit and everyone was
forced to come to a quick and sudden stop. I had come to a complete
stop in my vehicle and a few moments later a van hit us from behind
pretty hard. We both pulled our vehicles to the side of the road and
took all the necessary procedures for an accident. Luckily, there was
no damage to either vehicle or any people. The person who struck my
vehicle explained how she was distracted, but if they had only been
educated on how important safe driving is and measures to ensure safe
driving this would not have happened in the first place.
