The student news site of Baldwin High School, est. 1999

The Bulldog Bulletin

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The student news site of Baldwin High School, est. 1999

The Bulldog Bulletin

The student news site of Baldwin High School, est. 1999

The Bulldog Bulletin

Distracted driving and its ramifications

“I can’t discuss this now. Driving and facebooking is not safe. Haha.” was shared by the Huffington Post when Taylor Sauer died leaving the Utah State University Campus in Logan due to distracted driving, this was the last thing she sent to a friend she was messaging on facebook when she crashed head-first into a tanker truck.

Sauer posting every 90 seconds according to the Huffington Post. They found no signs she applied the brakes. Sauer was 18.

Teens think they can do anything, they think they are invincible. Teens think they can do anything and they will get by without accident or injury. Many teens seem to be “addicted” to their phone and can not go long without texting their friends back. When a teen gets a call, they seem to think that the call is more important than what they are doing, which is driving. It is not that teens do not understand the dangers, its that teens decide to ignore them.

Just like Sauer, the danger in distracted driving in obvious, when a teen in distracted they are not looking at the road, and could hit, or miss, anything. Distracted driving is not only a danger to the driver, but to those around him or her. When a person is distracted, one of the things that they could hit is another car, a biker, or even just someone walking down the sidewalk. Texting and driving is the leading cause of car accidents in America, and car accidents caused by this is the leading cause of death in teens.

If a text is so important to a teen, they can pull over and look at it and reply, or wait until they get to their destination. As for talking on the phone, bluetooth, or speaker works, but the action of holding your phone to your ear is what researchers believe is the dangerous part.

The ultimate way to convince a teen not to text and drive is tell them stories of other teens who have gotten injured, injured someone else, killed someone else, or gotten killed themselves by distracted driving. Another way is to simply take away the teens phone if the parent is that worried about it. Many teens love money, and when they have it, they either do not want to spend it, or they want to spend it on things they want. Teachers can put the fear of a ticket in the teenagers; it is illegal to text and drive, and if you get caught the ticket price starts at $160.

At one time I did text and drive, and when I looked up, I was about to go off the road. At that moment, I thought to myself, what would happen if I had not looked up at that moment? What would my family do? I knew they would be disappointed that I was texting while driving, but they would be even more devastated if I had gotten seriously injured, or killed. I thought about the life that I could have, and how that would all be gone if I had not looked up. I thought about my friends, my dogs, and of course, myself. If I had gotten in an accident, I would have been injured, how bad would it have been? A cut? A gash? Or, could I have lost a limb? Or could I have been paralyzed? I’m lucky, I did not get hurt, I did not hurt anyone else. Others are not so lucky, and those others are the ones who I pray for every night. Texting and driving is dangerous, and should never be done, by teenagers or adults.