The phone. For my mom it’s always the phone. She’s constantly complaining about my phone. There’s time limits, and rules, and expectations, and always the complaining. “Snapchat is so dumb!” “Why are you only snapping a photo of your ear, of the road, the ground?” What I hear is a nagging sound that only goes away if I leave the room and hide away in the solitude of my bedroom. My phone is a lifeline to my social life and whatever else I deem necessary at the time, so conveniently available at my fingertips. It's a small portable device that is mine.
.
I’m seventeen years old and have been driving for a little over a year. I love the independence that comes with having a driver's license and a car.  When my parents were shopping for a reliable vehicle, the only requirement I had was a Bluetooth hookup so I could listen to my music. Being in my car, driving, and listening to music is something that makes me feel truly happy.  My mom jokes when I’m in the car with her that she needs to “turn down the music so she can see better.”  I didn’t get what she was saying; I thought she was just complaining that the music I was jamming was just too loud.



Last June I had a horrifying experience that I never want to relive again. My friend and I had spent the evening driving around town and shopping together.  We bought matching sweatpants and were having fun just hanging out. She needed to be home by nine and we were less than a mile from her house when my front tires were grabbed by the gravel.  I didn’t think I overcorrected or overreacted, but the next thing I knew my car was traveling down the steep ditch into the swamp.  When I finally got the car stopped, I knew it was bad.  Frantically, I called my mom, and after several additional phone calls, a tow truck was on the way.  Not only was my car in rough condition, my mom was thankful I was okay, she was disappointed.  When the tow truck driver turned on my car to start it to be able to get it out of the swamp, the volume of my music was so loud we could hear the bass pumping from the safety of my mom’s car where we were patiently waiting. My mom turned to me with “that” look on her face and said rather matter of factly, “Well that couldn’t be the reason you went in the ditch, could it?”  The booming bass made it quite obvious that I wasn’t paying attention like I should have been while driving.  My mom kept saying how much worse it could have been, and I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if she was right.



I know my music can be a distraction if I let it, and in the situation I just described it definitely was (although I never admitted it to my parents.)   I might not like the song, or I can’t get the one song to play that I feel like listening to at the moment.  Something as simple as just glancing down to switch the station or trying to find the right playlist on my Spotify account can be enough to cause a serious distraction. Singing with my friend in the car that night and not keeping my eyes focused on the road ahead was enough to make me steer into the gravel and have my car get pulled down into the ditch. What I did realize was that in an instant your whole perspective can change with the jarring feel of your tires getting pulled off the road and down, down, down into a swamp at fifty-five miles an hour. It’s not worth worrying so much about my playlist or jamming to the music while I’m driving. I could have rolled my car or worse I could have really hurt my friend and I don’t ever want to have an experience like this accident again.



To be less distracted while driving I now choose one of my playlists before heading out, and can easily skip songs by using a button on my steering wheel.  I no longer look at my playlist while driving so I don’t lose my focus on the road or turn my attention away from driving. Now when I’m driving with a friend in the car and listening to music I limit how much I “dance and drive,” so my attention remains on the road and my surroundings. My car is still a place of enjoyment, and I want to make sure it’s safe for me and my friends.  I know I won’t always be as lucky as I was and need to ensure that I am a safe driver for myself and others.