Distracted driving has been a problem ever since Karl Benz’s three wheeled car rolled out of the factory in eighteen eighty six. Texting, eating and drowsiness are a few of the many distractions while driving.
Texting and driving has been causing fatal accidents since the first phone was invented because you take your eyes off the road. Eating while driving is another big distraction because it makes a mass and you lose a hand to drive with. Drowsiness is one of the worst distractions because you can’t focus on the road and if you fall asleep you can kill yourself or someone else. Texting, eating, and drowsy driving is distracted driving, which is a big problem and it needs to end because its putting people in dangerous situations including death.Texting and driving is one of the many distractions while driving. First of all, texting and driving is illegal and you will receive very serious penalties if you are caught especially if you get into an accident and kill someone. Some of the penalties for texting and driving are hefty fines, license suspension, auto insurance rate rises and even prison time (DMV.
org). If people stop texting and driving they can avoid these penalties and it will be part of ending distracted driving. Texting while driving makes you take your eyes off the road and will take at least one hand off the steering wheel making a gap for disaster to happen.
Twenty-six percent of all car crashes in 2014 were caused by a cellphone (DMV.org). Twenty-six percent is a big percent compared to all the other causes of accidents.
If twenty-six percent of accidents were caused by a cell phone then imagine how much worse it will get with technology advancing. At Least nine people are killed everyday due to a distracted driver (DMV.org). Most of those nine people that get killed have a family, or kids or something else that they need to go home to everyday. Imagine if someone you loved or someone that cares for you gets killed crossing the street because someone decided that their text was more important than someone else’s life. More than one-thousand people get injured everyday because of a distracted driver (DMV.org). These people are lucky because they only got injured.
This is still a problem, just because they survived doesn’t mean that their life will return to the exact same way as before. People can get paralyzed, lose limbs, lose the ability to speak, unable to break properly and some get a very serious brain injury and cant think right. Texting and driving is a major problem that contributes to distracted driving and it needs to stop. Imagine driving on the highway after a nice christmas party.
You got to see your family, eat good food and open gifts from loved ones. After a nice night you are exhausted and driving on the highway at sixty miles per hour. You start to swerve back and forth in your lane then you close your eyes. A few months later you wake up, in a cold hard hospital bed with plastic tubes and thin colored wires on your body.
This could be you or someone you love because drowsy driving is still distracted driving. Drowsiness makes drivers less able to pay attention to the road (CDC.gov). When you fall asleep at the wheel you put yourself and others at risk for death and injury. Anyone can fall asleep behind the wheel including teens and adults. Imagine if you were waiting for your child to come home but instead you don’t see them at home, instead you see them in a casket a few day slater.
Drowsiness slows reaction time you have to brake or steer (CDC.gov). When reaction time is slowed you are highly likely to get into an accident with another object like a car, a wall or even another human life. If people aren’t able to react fast on the road it will be hard to drive because they won’t be able to keep up with changing traffic patterns and it can cause a life threatening accident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that drowsy driving was responsible for 72,000 crashes, 44,000 injuries, and 800 deaths in 2013 (CDC.
gov). However, these numbers are underestimated and up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year may be caused by drowsy drivers (CDC.gov). If these statistics are underestimated that means even more accidents could have been caused by drowsy driving, more than we think. Don’t become a statistic, if you are tired but need to drive just pull off the road into a well lit and well populated area and take a nap so you can arrive alive. So next time you get behind the wheel while you’re drowsy just think about your family and loved ones that need you and arrive alive.Food, everyone loves food, with America today many people don’t have time to sit and eat because they need to get to work or they are simply too busy to sit and eat. A study by Exxon Mobil said that out of 1,000 drivers they discovered that 70 percent of drivers eat while driving and 83 percent drink beverages when they are on the road (DTD.
org). These are big statistics and this was made out of one-thousand drivers so imagine how many more people are eating while driving. This statistic sounds like people just trying to get to work and don’t have time to sit and eat but not many people realize it can be life threatening. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that eating and driving increases the likelihood of crashes by 80 percent.
Additionally, 65 percent of near-miss crashes are caused by distracted drivers who are eating or drinking while driving (DTD.org). If the chances of a crash increase when driving it makes the roadways even more dangerous than they already are. With new and inexperienced drivers entering the roadways this increases the chances of them colliding with a distracted driver because they might not know how to react fast. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ranked the 10 most dangerous types of food to eat while driving (DTD.
org). Eating and driving is at the top of the list yet people still continue to do it. Why would you want to risk your life for food? A crash from food is exactly the same as a crash from any other form of distracted driving — which took the lives of 3,477 people in 2015 alone, when comprehensive data was last collected (Thrillist.
com). If 3,477 people died in 2015 then that means there was about nine deaths every day because of eating and driving. These numbers will only rise with new jobs that require full time work appear in the job market creating a bigger problem with eating and driving. These numbers can change if we decide to not eat and drive. How would you feel if you killed someone because you were eating? In conclusion texting, eating, and drowsy driving is distracted driving, which is a big problem and it needs to end because its putting people in dangerous situations including death. Texting and driving kills about nine people a day and it will only get worse with new technology. Eating while driving seems harmless but the chance of an accident increases by eighty-eight percent which also killed about nine people a day in 2015.
Drowsy driving is one of the worst forms of distracted driving that killed 800 people in 2013. Distracted driving is a problem and it will only get worse if we don’t end it. How would you feel if you killed someone because you were doing something you weren’t supposed to do while driving? That person could be a kid.
