Texting and Driving

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.

Works cited

“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