Don't text and drive

According to distraction.gov, 3,328 people were killed in car accidents involving distracted driving in 2012. That’s less than a hundred fewer than the year before and those numbers don’t even touch the 421,000 injuries resulting from distracted driving in 2012. Let’s get the life-saving started here, yeah?

Don’t think, just answer. If you were navigating a passenger-bearing missile at 70 miles per hour, wouldn’t you want to take a lot of care to make sure you didn’t hit anything along the way? The obvious answer is yes, but the above website reports that for young people, the realistic answer, somehow, is no.

People in their 20s make up over a quarter of the body count when it comes to distracted driving fatalities. This could be caused by our ADD society, a feeling of social awkwardness about talking verbally (which you can at least do while keeping your eyes on the road), and probably a lack of understanding about just how much more dangerous it is to text while driving.

If a brief clock glance can cause a pile-up, how much more likely is the catastrophe going to be if you’re doing something as complicated as typing and sending a text message?

It’s like playing the piano and dictating a novel at the same time.

The good news is that it’s easy to stop. A person only needs to do two things: take back their personal power and enjoy the drive. It feels good to tell your friends, “I’m busy right now; I’ll get back to you in a minute.” The presence of mind it takes to wait to respond to that last text can be all it takes to save 10 lives at a time. Also, let’s just be present and focus in on what we’re doing.

Look around, check your rearview miror an extra time, see if you can spot something you’ve never noticed before—even sing along with the radio. When you really enjoy what you’re in the middle of doing—even something as mundane as driving—you don’t even want to be interrupted by things like text messages.

If people stop texting and start focusing on their driving more, we will all be safer. We will also feel more in control of ourselves.

Charles R. Kyd

Cheney