Life on the line

With my hands on the wheel, I patiently waited for the light to turn green. My dad was next to me, and we were looking forward to checking out Sprouts, an organic grocery store that recently opened along the University Boulevard. The traffic light flickered from red to green allowing me to move my foot from the brakes to the gas. The clicking of the turn signal sounded the whole way through as I turned left. What should’ve lasted for about five seconds turned into 20. A driver on the opposite side of the road inched closer and closer to the edge and decided to turn right just as I was coming towards her. Her mind was on the phone that was in her hand, but thankfully, my mind was on the road. What could’ve been inches away from a scrape on the tail was prevented because I was alert.

Drivers nowadays have an abundance of distractions. Cars are more advanced, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to slack off in terms of driving safely. Driving education is important because it sets the base for all drivers to know the basic rules of driving so that we don’t have to depend on a piece of transportation to alert us whenever we’re doing something wrong. We can’t put our lives into the hands of technology. We should be responsible for our own lives and the lives of others in the car.

Distractions are going to be uncalled for in certain situations but for those that we can prevent, such as eating or putting on makeup, they should be managed beforehand. The following acronym is important to remember because they are the main causes of accidents: LIFE.

Listening to music

A study by scientists at Newfoundland’s Memorial University found that reaction time can slow as much as 20% when someone is listening to loud music. Turning down the volume will prevent accidents because it will allow drivers to be more alert about their surroundings and be able to hear honks or car sensors. Studies also show that drivers tend to focus more on the music they’re familiar with than the road, leading to an increase of chances for a dangerous outcome. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t listen to any music at all, but instead, we need to prepare beforehand by putting on our favorite playlist so that we don’t have to keep changing the songs and become distracted by the radio.

Infants

According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, children create four times the distraction to drivers as adult passengers do, with infants being nearly eight times as disturbing. Infants are always going to be unpredictable, but there is a solution so that the driver doesn’t have to be distracted from the road. Always make sure that there is someone else in the car to take care of the infants in the case that they cry, throw toys around, or start yelling. If that extra passenger isn’t available, try to find things for the infants to be distracted with such as a movie or a YouTube video. Find ways to veer drivers’ attention from the kids to the road.

Food/friends

The crash risk doubles when teens drive one peer passenger and triples with two or more teen passengers. The more friends you have in the car, the louder the conversations are and the more likely you are going to be distracted by those conversations. Before you start moving the car with your friends in the car, make guidelines such as not being too loud, not making messes, and being respectful so that you don’t have to worry about that throughout the drive. Another cause of accidents is food. According to a study by Lytx, drivers with food and drink are 3.6 times more likely to be in a car crash than their attentive counterparts. The most beneficial and easiest solution is to eat before or after the ride so that you can have both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road rather than your breakfast burrito.

Electronics

It has been known that driving and texting shouldn’t go together, yet many drivers still do it. That urge to find out the latest school drama and the need to reply within a minute is not worth your life or someone else’s. There have been laws passed that prohibited phones in your hands but that hasn’t fixed the problem. Perhaps putting our phones on do not disturb or even on silent before we start driving is a possible solution because we won’t know we’re getting notifications until we turn our phones back on. With our cars becoming more innovative and modern, we can find a way for our phones to somehow interact with the engine of the car so that the car knows when the driver is distracted and apply precautions to steer the driver’s attention back to the road. The most beneficial solution, however, requires the least amount of work and that is to ignore the phone when on the road.

The next time you go on the road, remember LIFE because it affects your own life and others.

Sources

“The 7 Deadly Sins of Distracted Driving: Wrath (of Music).” Auto-Related News, Trends, & Tips - I Drive Safely, www.idrivesafely.com/defensive-driving/trending/7-deadly-sins-distracted-driving-wrath-music.

“Learn the Warning Signs Before Your Children Cause a Distracted Driving Crash.” Johnson & Gilbert, P. A., www.mylegalneeds.com/library/how-children-may-cause-distracted-driving-accidents.cfm.

“Peer Passengers.” Teen Driver Source, www.teendriversource.org/teen-crash-risks-prevention/distracted-driving/peer-passengers.

“Distracted Driving: Eating and Drinking Behind the Wheel.” Distracted Driver Accidents, 1 Feb. 2017, distracteddriveraccidents.com/eating-distracted-driving/.