An Effort at Road safety

Road safety is critical to the American public well being and truly is not taken as seriously as it should be, anytime I drive to work or school I have to take the I-80, and on which every second person I pass is on their phone while flying down the freeway upwards of 65 miles per hour. On my way back from school yesterday I even saw someone with bonds hands off the wheel and just eating a bag of Cheetos, which I’m sure did a little more than distract him slightly. The point is people don’t seem to think about the fact that they are driving thousands of pounds of metal and if they hit someone, which could happen at any moment due to any series of random occurrences, that person is more than likely dead or seriously injured and all parties involved will have their lives drastically altered due to a split second of negligence. I think that educating people on the dangers on the road and making it more clear what the reality is of car crashes which will inevitably result from distracted driving look like. The real problem is that people just think it can’t happen to them, and as such don’t worry a car crash seems like a faraway thing to most people and they think it happens to other people, never themselves. Perhaps by bringing such stories to light in ad campaigns or road safety videos for getting a license more drivers will be better versions of their current selves on the road and reduce injuries and fatalities. I have been lucky enough to never have been in a driving accident, although during my high school years, there were two major accidents involving students. One was slightly before my time but had an incredible impact on the community still five years after in y senior year, I was and still am friends with the sister of one of those who passed away from the accident and can safely say that the consequences of a distracted driver have changed her life forever, without going into too much detail because I don’t think it is my place to I think it should be restated that this has lifelong consequences for all those even related to people involved in an accident. The second case was when a student I knew got in a crash and suffered major burn wounds and as a result had to have both hands amputated, while he luckily survived the consequences of a car crash was still absolutely life-changing and set him on an entirely new life trajectory than what he thought he was going to follow. Both of these events have made me very particular about who I let drive me around as well as how I drive and I am sure that if other people were exposed to stories like this before getting their licenses they would behave much differently on the road and maybe be a little safer. I could also improve my driving safety I let my music distract me while I am driving on occasion so I could probably benefit from putting my phone in a spot where there is no chance I could get to it while driving, or just commit to one genre of music per driving session. Others I know struggle with their phones in a little bit greater capacity. Some people frequently use Snapchat when they are driving and will send pictures and videos of them driving which always shocks me how dangerous that is. So by eliminating that phone component, I think a lot of lives could be saved. Maybe implementing a feature on certain apps like Snapchat that would not let you use the phone if you were detected to be driving and thus no temptation. The same thing could be used for Spotify or other music listening apps, perhaps a downtime of one or two minutes of being stopped and then unlocking the phone to not allow people to loophole through the rules at stop signs or lights. All in all, I think there are many new tools at our disposal to enhance driver safety and understanding of consequences for drivers and their negligence. The surge in phone activity could be used to help educate rather than distract maybe even run distracted driving ads on Spotify so people will have such ideas reinforced as often as possible, there are a plethora of opportunities and each one taken advantage of would save lives, and in the end that is the real goal.