The lecture your parents and friends give you about paying attention on the road sounds like just that: a lecture. It immediately falls on deaf ears. After all, you’re old enough to make sound decisions, and you would never put yourself in harm’s way, even with a cell phone in hand, right? Wrong. The truth is that all people who have gotten into trouble driving have sworn they’d never put themselves in harm’s way, but it happens.
Texting
Texting is the biggest and most current offender of distracting drivers. The idea of talking on the phone is foreign to some, but texting is so commonplace that their phone is like an appendage. Each text can take up to five seconds or longer to compose. Those five seconds are the time in which big decisions need to be made. You might think that you’re in control, but people can lose control in far less time than that.
Texting isn’t the craze that causes fender benders. More than 4,000 lives a year are taken by teens who are distracted while driving. It’s a big number, and it’s a terrible number at that. It could be avoided if people would realize that distracted driving applies to them as well. Distracted drivers need car insurance most of all, but they also need to exhibit good common sense.
Friends
Even if you put the cell phone away, you’re still at risk unless you’re driving alone. Friends can be very distracting. They require, in many cases, a large amount of your attention, and that’s something that should be avoided at all costs. When you couple teens who are foolish enough to drive with their friends and text at the same time, it’s mostly amazing that there aren’t more accidents.
Simple Steps
The good news about combating distracted driving is that there are simple solutions to fix the problem. Drivers should keep their cell phone in the pocket or the back seat so they can concentrate on the road. Drivers should also make it understood to friends that anyone who gets in the car must support peaceful driving.
Rules are not around to make driving less fun. They’re around to make driving more fun. Getting into a car accident only makes matters worse for a person physically. If they’re lucky enough to suffer no bumps, they’ll certainly feel the financial impact of their carelessness. There’s no substitute for good common sense on the road, and there never will be.