Making Society Safer

Making our Society Safer: Stopping Distracted Driving

We hear so much about the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but I think that distracted driving is far more common in people my age, and equally dangerous. One week after I got my driver’s license, I was involved in a minor accident due to my own distracted driving. Although I wasn’t texting or talking on my phone, I did reach down to grab it when it fell off the passenger seat and I hit the car in front of me. Thankfully, nobody was injured and there was no significant damage to either car, but it scared me to death. That was the moment I decided I would never be the cause of a distracted driving accident.

In Florida, texting while driving is a primary traffic offense with only a $30 first offense ticket, so drivers are still texting and the law is rarely enforced. There are several types of distractions that contribute to accidents, including auditory distractions like loud music and loud talking with passengers/friends. Visual distractions can be anything that takes the driver’s eyes off the road, including watching something on the sidewalk, changing the radio station on the console, and of course checking your texts on your cell phone. Cognitive distractions are anything that takes your mind off driving and away from the traffic surrounding you, including daydreaming or a conversation or argument you might be having with the person you’re talking to on your cell phone. Manual distractions are anything that take your hands off the wheel, most commonly to pick up something that has fallen, and that is most often, your cell phone (like my accident as a brand new driver). Are you seeing the common thread? There are many distractions associated with cellphone use in the car. Distracted driving, specifically texting, “snapping” or watching TikTok or other social media sites utilizes several types of distractions, may be viewed by young people as a normal activity, and not a dangerous distraction. However, recent statistics show that over 400,000 injuries and 3,500 deaths annually, are caused by distracted driving. Texting causes you to look away from the road (visual distraction), think about things other than the cars around you (cognitive distraction) and means you have only one hand on the wheel (manual distraction). Talking on the phone is similar, and also adds an auditory distraction to the the problematic mix. It is common these days for teens to want to mimic other teens, especially “influencers” on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. On any given day, check out the cars next to you at a stop light; chances are you’ll be seeing a group of young people “making a TikTok” to post on social media, complete with music blaring, for effect. They also scroll through Instagram and try to get that perfect picture “for the ‘gram”. We all know it’s illegal and/or dangerous, but honestly think “it will never happen to me”. How many of us really think about it when we get into our cars every day?

How do we fix this? Perhaps, increasing the fee for a first offense to $100 would be more of a detriment. Also, we could add a driving enforcement team that focuses ONLY on those types of driving offenses, thus freeing up police officers to focus on more criminal activities. Additionally, my parents have told me that historically when they were my age, Driver’s Education, was actually a required high school class, and I think one way to reduce dangerous driving habits is to bring Driver’s Education back to the classroom, making it a required class. In addition to being able to teach safe driving, car care and how to change a tire, the impact of driving under the influence and driving distracted would be a requirement of the class. Not only do I think it’s important that driving is taught by certified/credentialed instructors (instead of parents who, themselves, might be terrible drivers or have dangerous habits), it would be an opportune time to reach young people about the dangers of distracted driving. I think videos from accidents, footage from crash sites, interviews with victims/families should be a required component of the Drivers Education class. As part of the class, student’s would be required to interview someone involved in a distracted driving accident and share that conversation with their classmates. While this might not completely eliminate distracted driving, I honestly hope and believe that it would be tremendously impactful.