Name: Jayden Marie Kraft
From: Missouri Valley, Iowa
Votes: 0
Imagine that you
are at the scene of an accident, you see a few EMTs heading towards
three cars. One car is upside and is believed to have two children
inside. The next car hit the railing right before a bride and the
people inside are nowhere to be found. Then finally you look at the
last car, and this car is the car that you were driving just moments
before this all happened. The last thing you remember was texting
your best friend back. More EMTs show up to the scene and begin to
help the other EMTs out, and soon enough the police show up as well.
After a few minutes, the children are finally gotten out of the car
and are soon zoomed off to the hospital. However, their father was
pronounced dead at the scene. Sure enough, the others from the second
car are found, however, only one is alive and is rushed to the
hospital. You look at yourself and realize you barely have a single
scratch on you. The only major thing is your forehead, which will
need stitches. Finally, the cops come to ask you what all happened,
and that is when it all starts to make sense… You were texting and
driving and ended up swerving into the other lane. Doing this caused
the first car to slam on its breaks and swerve into the wrong lane as
well. You ended up crashing into that car a little bit which ended up
making that car roll into the ditch and land upside down. The second
car, which was after the car you hit, swerved into the other lane and
slammed right into the railing which causes the passenger to be
ejected because he/she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. You not only
cause 2 deaths at the scene but the kids were also pronounced dead at
the hospital due to head trauma and blood loss. All of this was
caused by one single person not paying enough attention to the road,
and I think things ought to change.
Distracted driving
is a huge problem our nation faces every single day. Anything from
texting and driving to even changing the radio station is considered
distracted driving. I know this because throughout my driver’s
education class we had a quiz about what was considered distracted
driving or not. If teachers were to start emphasizing how important
safe driving is the death rates may go down, however, it is not only
the teachers’ fault. I have plenty of family members and friends that
do not drive safely on a daily basis. So, this means that our younger
generations are seeing what the older ones do and this is not
something we want the younger generation to pick up on. Driving is a
huge game of “Monkey See Monkey Do”, considering that parents are
the ones that start teaching their kids to drive. If a teen is
watching his/her parents text and drive that same teen may end up
thinking it is okay.
The first step we
should take is to make distracted driving laws a little bit more
strict. This will hopefully make the older generation see that it is
bad and dangerous, which will lead to the younger ones realizing it
is bad as well. Plus if no one is getting in trouble for distracted
driving, no result will happen. The death rates could continue to
rise if we just let people get away with it. Setting more laws or
even more penalties will not only lower distracted driving but
hopefully lower the death rates as well.
The next step we
should take is to start updating all the education on driving. I know
when I took drivers ed in 2017, I had books and videos from
the 1990s. This means that multiple programs are using extremely old
books with older rules and regulations without realizing that those
rules could have changed. Updating the videos is a good idea because
I remember almost everyone in my class falling asleep because of how
old and boring they were. I understand safe driving is not a fun
topic, but maybe making new videos that are more interactive will
involve the students a little more. Another good idea is to make the
classroom part of drivers ed more interactive. This will
not only help keep students interested but it will also hopefully
help them remember how important safe driving is.
Not everyone is
perfect, including me. I know somethings that I need to work on is
making sure I don’t focus on the radio so much. Listening to music,
as weird as it sounds, can also be distracting. Music can be
especially distracting if you are constantly changing the station,
which is something I struggle with. I also would like to work on
checking my blind spots even if I know there isn’t care there
because it is always better to be safe than sorry.
Now imagine you are
in your car before the accident and you hear your phone go off. You
go to reach for it but then stop yourself and look back at the road.
You notice a sign that says “Gas 3 Miles”. After reading
everything I mentioned, would you pick your phone up and answer that
text? Or would you continue driving and stop at the gas station then
answer your text?
