Mistaken Priviledge

In a self-aggrandizing and derelict culture, where our hubris prevents us from acknowledging our shortcomings, humility is a much-needed human quality worthy of resurfacing in Western culture. Fortunately, I was jointly raised by my grandparents, and most of the orthodox rules about etiquette, behavior, and philosophy were instilled in my psyche from a young age. I am not one to regularly check my phone for notifications and social media updates to engage in rapid dopamine rushes, as driving is occupying enough. Still, I must admit that I am guilty as sin of taking an occasional peek during the ordinary bottlenecks around the Miami metropolitan area. I should also mention my habit of speeding through my playlist queue’s until I find the song I am looking for, taking my eyes, but most importantly, my attention from the road for short yet decisive seconds. Finally, I should point out the correlation between my driving experience with friends and engaging in some of the most pleasurable, mentally stimulating, and memorable conversations about current events, gossip, and the comical singularities presented by pedestrians and drivers alike.

Fortunately, neither myself nor my parents have been the perpetrators of a vehicle accident. However, my father has been on the receiving end of a distracted driving incident. On his way to work during the fall of 2022, before sunrise and early on a Monday morning, my father got in a peculiar traffic incident with a distracted driver that incorrectly merged onto my father’s lane at a dangerously high speed, culminating in a quasi-rear-end/side collision that was sure to have the same effect as a cup of coffee that early in the morning. As a result of the collision, my father started to experience hand tremors and sharp pain in his elbow that interfered with his work performance and disintegrated the recuperation of a past surgery performed to heal a wrist fracture he got from a motorcycle incident from his youth.

A myriad of solutions have been proposed and implemented to decrease the rates of distracted driving in America, with some mainly directed toward younger drivers. Nevertheless, we continue to observe the pathology daily from all age groups. For example, “Do not disturb” or the adequately named “Driving” modes prevent your phone from alerting in response to notifications. Additionally, with minor setting adjustments, an automated message will let those trying to reach you know your current “driving” status. However, this solution fails to fix the issue of distracted driving. Although a helpful tool if you aim to not look at your phone in response to a stimulus, this is a mediocre solution for those who already built up the habit of driving while answering texts or scrolling through social media. Unable to pull over and punish every single distracted driver, those who engage in this dangerous activity as a routine custom are doomed to persist if they are not intervened —quoting one of the greatest behaviorists of the 20th century, B.F. Skinner, “There is no learning without reinforcement.” Consequently, I would recommend that passengers keep their drivers accountable for summiting to distractions while behind the wheel, for example, by producing constructive remarks, taking away phone privileges, changing roles with the driver altogether, or any punishment that will individually afflict the distracted driver, for it is only when we reward the appropriate behaviors while punishing the unfitting ones that we can expect a change in outcomes for the foreseeable future. Therefore, to personally limit my phone activities while actively driving, I aim to condition myself to avoid distracted driving by changing into a raunchy radio station, which I despise, every time I attempt to check a notification, respond to a text while driving, or trying to change music under unsafe circumstances speedily. Steadily associating distracted driving with a negative consequence, otherwise known as punishment. An Individual approach, albeit effective in the end because the privilege of enjoyable music, highly sought after by the subject, constitutes the perfect object of punishment in this situation in response to unwanted behaviors. Furthermore, I commit myself to keeping conversations to a minimum while under the responsibility of driving others to places. Engaging in conversations only when engaged beforehand, restricting my input to the essential parts of my argument and reminding others that I need to be concentrated while behind the wheel to reduce the noise and limit the conversation’s engagement.

Additionally, I propose a more enjoyable alternative supported by personal experience to the operant-conditioning-driven approach to diminish distracted driving. Since learning how to operate a vehicle with a manual transmission, I have noticed a reduced engagement in texting while actively on the road because my focus remains on the adequate functioning of the vehicle and how to operate it comfortably. Gamification is a rising strategy in business and other organizations looking to motivate and engage workers by introducing and tracking scores, simulating the experiences of playing games during an otherwise “boring” or unrelated task. Therefore, I would propose that everyone challenge themselves to learn the obscure yet valuable skill of “Stick-shift driving.” Not only because it provides you with bragging rights amongst your peers, but it incentivizes you to heighten your focus on driving and the proper functioning of the machine to ensure the driving experience is as comfortable as possible for you and your passengers. Of course, I recognize that more evidence is required to confirm that my findings will apply to the population of young drivers in the United States. However, friendly and safe competition among the social media crowd could transform stick-shift driving into a new internet challenge or trend, where young drivers not only showcase their vehicles but can instruct others with tips and tricks to improve their driving experience.

The power of education and knowledge lies in its existence and wide availability. Recent times have tested the utility of contemporary driving education formats as casualties continue to occur on our roads, notwithstanding the number of resources allocated for education or the formats allotted for it to be presented. However, the availability of knowledge is nonetheless pivotal to ensure individuals, especially first-time drivers, are provided with the facts intended to create safer and more efficient roads for everyone since we cannot genuinely expect drivers to follow the state and legal statutes if they are utterly oblivious to them. Still, distracted driving is not perpetuated primarily by oblivious drivers unaware of the associated punishments but by conscious drivers that underestimate the consequences of their ill-chastised behaviors. Preemptive education can expose young drivers to the horrid implications of taking their eyes mere seconds off the road. Furthermore, laws can be simultaneously strengthened to more adequately penalize an unwanted behavior that has already resulted in one too many tragedies. Education lies at the heart of the issue of distracted driving because, as we have seen from various perpetrators that have ruined lives, it is only when we become personally aware of the destructive power we are capable of unleashing so carelessly that we begin to take accountability and modify our behaviors for the better.