Answering a text or phone call, making a Snapchat video of driving on the open road, or even glancing down at your phone: all this may seem harmless, but it isn’t. The second the driver’s attention leaves the road, everyone in the car, and everyone in the nearby cars for that matter, is in danger. In the matter of a moment, that empty road you just had to film yourself driving on could suddenly not be so empty or the car in front of you could slam on the breaks.
According to the CDC, in 2015 there were 391,00 car wrecks caused by distracted driving, 3,477 of which resulted in death. That’s a high price to pay for a responding to a text or snapping a quick selfie. If those people had stayed off their phones, some — if not all — of those accidents might have been preventable. We all know that texting and driving, or any kind of screen interaction, while driving is dangerous, so why do so many of us continue to scroll through FaceBook or respond to Insta comments while behind the wheel?
The simple answer is that people aren’t thinking. Its the “everyone does it, so it can’t be that bad” mentality. These days seeing SnapChat or Instagram stories that were obviously made by someone who was sitting in the driver’s seat are painfully commonplace. We’ve all gotten texts from someone who was about to pick us up or meet us somewhere that was sent the same time they must have been driving. The pervasiveness of everyone’s phone-addiction has lead us to believe we’re safe using our phones while on the road, but we aren’t. Every time you prioritize interacting with your phone over paying attention to driving, you become a menace.
A more complicated answer, aside from the modern man’s phone-addiction, is that people believe they can multitask. “I’m still paying attention to the road,” I’ve heard people argue. “I can multitask!” Well, you can’t. No one can. The human brain isn’t wired to work that way, no matter how badly we wish it was. Multiple studies have concluded that the mind can’t efficiently focus on two things simultaneously; it prioritizes what it focuses on. If you pick up the phone while you’re driving and are interacting with the screen, that is what you’re focused on.
For every notification you have to check or text you have to reply to, there’s probably someone nearby who wants to get home without getting into a wreck. And if you can’t bring yourself to care about other people’s safety, care about your own. Not all distracted-driving related wrecks involve multiple cars or people. Looking at your phone could land you in the ditch beside the road just as easily as it could cause a multiple-car fatality.
Avoiding these kinds of tragedies is easy. All you have to do is ask yourself one question before stealing a glance at the alluring screen next to you: Is this worth causing a wreck for?
My guess is that it's probably not. Whatever notification has popped up on your screen can wait. And it can wait till you’re at a stop, not just till you’re currently the only car in sight. It only takes a couple seconds for someone to pull up beside you, or to come into the periphery of someone else. Be an adult, have some patience, and let everyone — yourself included — get home safely.
