Name: Courtney A. Doyal
From: Healdton , OKlahoma
Votes: 0
Courtney
Doyal
November
6, 2019
Texting
and Driving
Picture
this. You are driving back home from spending time with your family.
You reminiscence on all the fun you had together, when suddenly you
hear the familiar ping sound from your phone. You nonchalantly pick
up the phone and start to read the text message. You take your eyes
off the road for a solid two seconds, but two seconds is all that it
takes. You collide at high speeds into the car in front of you
stopped at a red-light. You feel your head slam hard into the
steering wheel before your vision fades black.
Texting
and driving is one of the five main causes of fatal car crashes. In
2017, a statistic showed that 15,341 drivers from the ages 15-29 were
involved in fatal car accidents (“Texting and Driving Accident
Statistics ”). Many people think, “It’s only a few seconds I
can do it,” but those “few seconds” are actually five seconds
or longer in total. In that amount of time, drivers have traveled
about the length of a football field (if they are driving 55 or 65
miles per hour). Drivers might as well have driven that distance with
their eyes closed! The Council of National Safety reports that cell
phones are connected to about 1.6 million crashes yearly. After
seeing ads for not texting and driving on the internet, it would
deter teens from doing this in reality. The fact is that teens are
becoming desensitized from seeing all the ads, and therefore are not
scared to text and drive. They don’t truly know how dire the
situation is until it’s too late. No message is worth losing a life
over.
When
drivers step into that “deadly machine”, they are making a
commitment to themselves and other drivers on the road. They need to
be aware of their surroundings and stay off their phones. Whatever
that message may be, it can wait until drivers are pulled over or
somewhere safe.
“Texting
and Driving Accident Statistics – Distracted
Driving.” Edgarsnyder.com,
https://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cause-of-accident/cell-phone/cell-phone-statistics.html.
Accessed November 14, 2019
