Boom

BOOM!

My little 8-year-old neck cranes from the window of my mom’s old Toyota Sienna Minivan to see grey/black smoke rising out of the hood of the car. The bright smile of my best friend standing on the sidewalk beside the car quickly drops into a trembling pout with a quivering lip. Let’s rewind fifteen seconds to see the full story. My mom had just picked me up from school and was driving me home when I saw my friend, Nick, walking home on the sidewalk beside the street. Mind you, this is the same best friend I had seen 20 minutes previously before the dismissal bell had rang. This small fact didn’t stop me, a crazy, eccentric whirlwind of energy, from cranking down the window, fitting my whole upper body outside of the car and shouting at the top of my lungs to get Nick’s attention. My mother kept a very strict car rule similar to that of roller coasters: Keep all hands and feet (and sometimes torsos) inside of the moving vehicle. In her attempt to tame the demon that my brother claims I was possessed with as a child and get me back into the car, she took her focus off the road for a half of a second and BAM. Rear ended the car in front of her at the stop sign, with me still halfway outside of the car.

Now that I am a driver myself, I can confidently say that the accident was 100% my fault, even though I wasn’t the driver. Distracted driving is the cause for 1 out of every 5 accidents on the road (in my home state of Texas). Distracted driving can range from anything like picking up your phone while driving to having an eccentric passenger in the car. Because of my daring escapades as a child, my parents knew all too well what could happen if the person in the passenger seat becomes a distraction to the driver. When my older brother received his license, my parents made sure I understood what it meant to not distract my brother. I was not supposed use my phone, start an argument, or really do anything that could take his focus off the road. As my brother slowly became my favorite chauffeur and I began to ride in his car more and more, my parents may have stopped reminding me about not distracting him, but I didn’t forget, because I began to realize how important it was to stay focused.

Many states understand this as well because like Texas, they have laws stating that teens with provisional driver’s licenses are only able to drive one non-family member at a time. They know how much of a distraction having more than one person in the car can be, so lawmakers try to limit the number of distracted drivers on the road, making the roads safer for everyone. In 2021, 4,489 people died on the roadways in Texas, and 433 of those people were killed in car crashes involving distracted driving. This means that 10% of all car accident deaths in the state of Texas are caused by distracted driving, and that 433 people would still be alive today with their families if it weren’t for checking their phones, turning around to talk to a friend, or a lack of awareness due to blaring music.

Too many times have I reminded a friend that they shouldn’t be driving more than one person in their car, trying to look out for them, and their response is “oh its not a big deal, I’m pretty sure it’s not a real law, they are just trying to scare us” or something along these lines. Not only are these statistics and laws accessible to the public, they are an important section of the curriculum that teen drivers are required to learn before getting their license, making it worrying to hear that people don’t know or believe these harrowing truths.

As a driver myself, I do everything in my power to keep myself and my friends safe. Although it may be inconvenient in the moment, I tell my friends that I am only able to drive one of them at a time, because it is the law. Whether you agree with it or not, the law is put in place by legislators who are also trying to keep their families, communities, cities and the whole state safe. Nobody should be ok with the fact that there was not a single day in the year of 2021 that someone didn’t die on the roads in Texas. Limiting distracted driving is for everyone’s best interest in the long run. We all have our own families, friends and futures ahead of us, and nobody’s life deserves to be cut short because another driver was checking their text messages or was messing with their friends. Everything can be fun and games until you step into the car, but once you do, your life and the lives of everyone on the road around you can be affected so quickly by one poor decision.