Tech in Motion

More cars are on the road than ever before, and with some states providing hardship licenses for people as young as twelve, more and more young people are driving. Now, as much as past generations like to think that their driving was the best—and I’m sure my generation will feel the same way in the future—each age group has its kryptonite when it comes to driver safety: for my great-grandparents, the lack of road rules and newness in general of motorized transport; for my grandparents, lack of seatbelts and drag racing; and for my parents, changing the radio or playing with tapes and CDs. For my generation, it’s the phone. We all have them at the ready because we can’t miss that call, text, or oh-so-crucial post.

And while this is something that can be addressed in driver education, we’re flat-out addicted to our tech, and it’s dangerous. How many times have you been at a stoplight, looked over, and seen someone texting? How many times have you seen that while moving on the road? Now, the question that might sting. How many times have you been that person on the phone? C’mon, raise your hand. I can say I have. I normally try not to. I’ll pull over if I can, but sometimes, yes, I answer that call. I can make excuses: it’s my brother or mother or father, it’s an emergency, or, my mom’s favorite, I’m on the backroads. But it’s all just excuses. We don’t need to; we want to.

And there’s the biggest problem. We have to fix the want-to, that innate desire to not miss anything in our hectic, social media-driven lives. Yes, hands-free has helped with calls, and there is a program that can change your texts to audio and play it over the car speakers. All that helps, if it’s available and actually used, but if it’s not, it’s the same as not having it at all. I think it would helpful to lock certain apps, like social media, when a phone is in motion in a car. But then you run into the obstacle of the passengers in the car. And you can’t say, “Well, we’ll just include this on the cars that teens and young adults drive” because I’m here to tell you, the older generations are just as bad as my age group about being on their phones while driving. We all say, “Oh, it won’t hurt if I do this just this once. It’ll be fine.” All of us, young and old, think we’re amazing, great drivers, but we’re not. The younger generation thinks they’re, as my mom says, ten feet tall and bulletproof. The older generation thinks because of their massive experience, they are better able to handle the distraction. But one slip, one error, and that’s it. And that’s how it happened in my accidents. Yes, I said accidents, with an S, as in more than one.

One slip of the foot when I was just learning to drive, and instead of the brake, I hit the gas while making a turn. There were a lot of “thankfullys” that day. Thankfully, we were right up the road from our house when I took that corner and hit the neighbor’s fence. Thankfully, it was a fence with old wooden posts, except for one metal post, which, thankfully, I didn’t hit. And thankfully, I went into the fence at such an angle that I also missed the very large cedar tree. And finally, thankfully, no one was hurt, the car was minimally damaged, and the neighbor was gracious about his fence, which I did fix.

One error on the way to school for early morning football practice, and I went into the ditch and Dukes of Hazzard’d over someone’s driveway. The error wasn’t that I had my phone out or that I was playing with the radio. It was simply that I had worked the night before, and I fell asleep. With that one, yes, I was hurt. My face slammed into the steering wheel…twice. I was bruised and bloody and nearly bit through my tongue and lower lip. Plus, the look on my mom’s face when I walked in with blood all down my hoodie is one I won’t forget. The truck didn’t fare so well, either.

So, yes, I keep my phone away from me as much as possible when I’m driving. I know I need to get it 100 percent, and I’m working on it. I also point out to my mom when she grabs her phone. Usually, if she has her phone, it will be on the backroads, but even if it’s only the gravel roads, there are hazards, like dogs and deer running out in front of us. I think we can all be better and safer drivers, regardless of age, but we have to be actively aware of what we’re doing, take responsibility for where we’re lacking, and make a concerted effort to improve those discrepancies. Yes, looking at the statistics, fatalities improved for a while, but they took an upswing in the last few years with an over-ten percent jump from 2020 to 2021, the largest increase in fatalities since the end of World War II. Sometimes, accidents do happen, and there is nothing that could have been done, and that is tragic. But accidents that happen because of a phone or a radio are double-tragic because they can be prevented.