“When you’re distracted, who’s driving?” A great question, that we should ask ourselves everyday before we get behind a wheel and start texting and driving.” According to a AAA poll, 94 percent of teen drivers acknowledge the dangers of texting and driving, but 35% admitted to doing it anyway.” Something that we know is so dangerous but, yet we do it any ways. In some ways it is believable that we as humans can multi task but when you really think about it we can’t and when it comes to texting and driving our eyes surly go off one thing and move on to the other because you must take your eyes mind and concentration of one thing and put it on two. Which I believe is even more difficult for humans to do which in many ways results in car accidents and fatalities behind the wheels of cars when texting and driving is involved. But the real question is how we can stop it, how can we be safer drivers and encourage our kids to take accountability and not text and drive.
You don’t get to choose weather or not you text and drive based off your personal ability to be able to multitask you’re not going to tell the police officer when he pulls you over because you had your phone in your face “but officer I’m an amazing multi-tasker. “It is the law the law clearly states for the state of California “A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while holding and operating a handheld wireless telephone or an electronic wireless communications device unless the wireless telephone or electronic wireless communications device is specifically designed and configured to allow voice-operated and hands-free operation, and it is used in that manner while driving.” Which means texting is not allowed. But even though there are laws backing this up and law enforcement implementing the law when they pull people over people still choose and do it anyway and risk it. But sometimes risking it can be what ends it all for you.
Texting and driving has become something out of control it has become an epidemic something the state and law enforcement are trying so hard to control but in some ways are failing at it. In the article “Addressing the Texting and Driving Epidemic: Mortality Salience Priming Effects on Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions” by Ioannis Karelas distracted driving is defined as “any activity that may divert a person’s attention away from the primary task of driving”. So basically, anything that can take your attention off driving is definable as distracted driving and texting is one of the worst because it requires visual meaning it takes your eyes off of the road you’re driving on, manual meaning the steering wheel your supposed to be holding your maybe holding it with one hand , and cognitive attention from the driver, which means your not focusing on being a safe driver and being fully aware of your surroundings . Which is also what its takes to drive a car. It takes your full body and mind to be an affective driver. Every part of you must be focused because you must know what is going on in front of you behind you on the side of you pretty much every where and that alone takes up the full capacity of your brain.
In 2013 Bendak, Salaheddine did a simulator study on the effects of texting while driving they had twenty-one subjects and put them through different simulation scenarios using a Independent variable of texting and the dependent variables varied between session duration, accident, distance driven, Number of unnecessary lane boundary crossings, percent of time driver eyes were off-road and ect. The conclusion they found in this experiment they found that “the results clearly demonstrate a drop in driving performance and a significant distraction when driving while texting as compared to driving without texting.” They took Twenty-five different people and confirmed with all twenty-five that while they were texting they were distracted some even to the point of going onto the wrong lane on the road, driving off the road or even getting in to a crash. But this simulation concluded that it is a distraction and to do this is very unsafe and irresponsible.
In some ways not texting and driving needs to be a second nature or people doing it need to be giving a harder punishment because these are lives we are playing with and it has only gotten worse over the years teens are dying so often and the cause texting behind the wheel of a car. Did you know “26% of all car crashes in 2014 involved cell phone use. At least 9 people are killed every day because of a distracted driver. More than 1,000 people are injured every day due to a distracted driver. In 2015 42% of teens say they have texted while driving—and texting and driving is the leading cause of death in teens.” The facts of these problems are given to us every single day you can look them up on google, but we would rather not know. Gupta, Pola B’s investigation on texting while driving feels it is a lack of self-control “Individuals with low levels of self-control are more likely to text while driving than those with more self-control.” You have to have the will power to not do it to leave your phone where it is but then were brought up in another good point the problem that many in this generation fight with it is the addiction of texting. Gupta defines an addiction as “Addiction can be defined as a “process whereby a behavior, that can function both to produce pleasure and to provide relief from internal discomfort. Where texting these days has become an addiction for most it implies you will do it at an impulse. Where ever you get a message at any point of time even when you are behind the wheel.
Lets take a look at Laura Tardif’s story “It’s 8:14 p.m. on June 21, 2014, and Laura is driving her Mazda 3 north on Route de la Station in L’Isle-Verte. She sends a text message to her friend. Two minutes later, a reply comes buzzing on Laura’s iPhone and she opens the messages. The car approaches a rail crossing at the crest of a hill. The crossing’s red lights flash, its bells clang and the oncoming locomotive sounds its whistle four times. But Laura never slows down. The train barrels into Laura’s car at 64 kilometers an hour. The coroner concludes Laura didn’t see the train coming because she was using her mobile phone”, the prime example of self death by distraction. But now we must look at the other end of these stories causing hurt or even killing people because you were texting, and driving were going to meet two people John Boden and Dillon Young, two people whose lives were affected A truck sliced through the front of his convertible, then rolled on the highway. The truck threw out a 17-year-old girl, into the ditch, breaking her femur and pelvis. But Boden was still suck down in the driver’s seat of his own car only hearing the screams of the teenage girl in the distance. Later on, as the investigation thickens the investigators would find out the trucks teenage driver had looked away from the road to send her text message before she swerved onto the wrong side of the road and hit Boden and to follow Bowden would never walk again and would later on die a few years later. Before the accident Bowden was a very active man with so much more of his life left but that changed because of one person’s mistake would spend his last few years in pain in and out of hospital rooms and would never live the life he was living before. But now we meet Dillon Young a 20 year old driving his truck in Huston Texas where he would end up killing 13 people and fully admitted to texting while driving. Twelve died on the scene the driver of the truck lived and the thirteenth person died in the hospital of their injuries later on that night.
What we have to realize as a people is everyone can fall victim of the texting while driving epidemic you could be minding your own business and the next moment someone ends up hitting you because they just had to answer that text.
