Distracted Driving epidemic
Imagine you and your best friend are in the car going on a road trip. You’re driving and your friend is in the passenger seat. They are in control of the music and you are supposed to be driving and watching the road. You're going about 70mph, your friend asks you to look at a text on her phone, so you take your eyes off the road. You look down for about four seconds to see what they are trying to show you. In the matter of that four seconds that you were not looking at the road, then you look back up, you see a tree coming at your car and you have no time to stop. After you finally stop you turn to see your lifeless friend next to you. All you can think is if you wouldn’t have looked at the phone, she could still be alive. In the article titled “Distracted Driving” they have found “Each day in the United States, approximately 9 people are killed and more than 1,000 injured in crashes that are reported to involve a distracted driver” (“Motor Vehicle Safety” 1). Phones aren't the only cause of distracted driving. The radio station, the a/c controls, the person in the passenger seat or the backseats talking to you and taking your attention off the road, smoking, eating and drinking, even objects and people outside of the car that you tend to look over at (“SafeStart” 1).
History
Being in the generation that we are in with all the new technology that comes with vehicles, we are way to easily distracted when driving. Distracted driving didn’t start with this generation it came about when the first car was made, and when people started driving. Going back in time, the first car ever made was the Benz Patent motor car. The first stationary gasoline engine developed by Carl Benz was a one-cylinder two-stroke unit which ran for the first time on New Year's Eve 1879 (Benz: Benz Patent Motor Car 1). This car was the first vehicle to have a gad powered engine and an electric ignition. The engine only weighed about 100 kilograms and its top speed was about 400 rpm (Benz: Benz Patent Motor Car 1). With the invention of the radio made by Galvin Manufacturing known as the “motorola” in 1930 (Laukkonen 1), it encouraged people to take their eyes off the road to find a channel with some type of music or news station. With all the improvements and upgrades that people have done to the cars and all the new types of vehicles that companies started to create, with making them faster, heavier, and adding a bunch of new technology provided with them, distracted driving started to make its appearance with a very fast approach to something devastating. When radios were added, and cellphones were invented everything took a turn for the worst as people were always on their phone and fiddling with the radio while they were also trying to drive all at once. Why did distracted driving not get prevented? Why do people decide to put themselves in danger while operating a heavy machine? What effects has distracted driving had on our life?
Effects on Society
In 2015, distracted driving crashes caused 391,000 injuries and 3,477 deaths (Texting and Driving Accident 2018 Statistics 1). Distracted driving is such a worldwide problem that it has effects on every aspect of the world, physically and emotionally. People do not think about what they are doing while trying to drive and what damage it could cause until something happens, and they are living their worst nightmare and suffering the consequences of the decisions they made while on the road. Not only does your decisions affect you but the effect the people around you that also must deal with the backlash that comes with your decisions.
In 2015, Charles Maurer and his daughter Cassy were victims of distracted driving from a teen who “didn't care if she crashed” after her two best friends and boyfriend repeatedly told her to stop texting while she was driving (Fox 1). Carlee R. Bolling was a 17-year-old girl who was unlicensed and thought she was a pro at multi-tasking. While on her phone, Carlee was not paying attention at all to what was in front of her and plowed right through a red light and slammed into the minivan that held Charles and Cassy, who both later on died from the impact and brain injuries they suffered from caused by the accident (1). Not only does Carlee have to deal with what she has done and pay the time in jail, the victim's family must now plan two funerals, bury their loved ones, and go through all the stages and emotional tolls of grief all because a stingy and bratty teenager thought she was too good at being on her phone and driving at the same time and didn’t think about how others could be affected by her actions.
Even if a phone or radio type thing is hands free or hands on it doesn’t change the simple fact that you're not paying attention to the road anymore and are mentally distracted now. Your actions on the road not only effect your family but it effects the people that are on the site and the ones that must clean it up after. When Police, Ambulance, Fire trucks are called and head out to a site where the driver had crashed into someone else and they see dead bodies, blood, and the damage to the cars and or the objects around them, it's not the easiest thing to look at and experience and can later on affect their seeing of the world and could even cause them to have horrific dreams at night from what they saw at work that day. If you crash into a pole or the railings of a bridge or even a building the city and people that own the buildings must pay for the damage that you caused just so they can fix their poles, rails, and buildings.
EXAMPLES
A very popular and original distraction was the Highway HIFI “Installed in select Chrysler models from 1956 to 1959” the Highway HIFI was the first turn table that fit into dashboard of the car (Fruhlinger 1). This was a great example of when distracted driving started because to get the music to work and play you had to fiddle with the wires and the record needles to make sure it was where it needed to be, or it wouldn’t play the music. By doing that your attention was taken off the road and onto the music so you would put yourself at a higher risk of crashing into something and possible hurting someone else also.
Now a days the cell phone is likely the reasons behind a distracted driving crash unlike back in the days. Especially in teenagers, they always feel the need to reply to a text or open and look at their phone when they get a notification or text. Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds. At 55 mph, that's like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed (Andrew 1). Now that a cellphone can hook up to your car via blue tooth people tend to play their music off their phone, so it plays on their speakers in the car. Now when people change the song because they don’t like the one playing or they just don’t want to listen to it, they look down at their phone, taking their eyes off the road, and change the song until they find the one they want to listen to.
Solutions
Most epidemics can have many solutions to solving or try to get rid of them and can be done fairly easy, but distracted driving does not have that privilege. There are ways that people have come up with to try and get rid of or at least decrease the chances of acting in distracted driving, but that does not always mean people will always follow them or stick to the rules. There is already some type of enforcers out there to discourage people to stop driving while distracted. Some out are all kinds of laws in different states, there are a whole bunch of commercials and advertisements that will show what happens in bad crashes caused by distracted driving, and even some phones have certain features that will try to not let you use your phone when in a car if it suspects you're moving pretty fast like a car would be going.
For example, a solution to decrease distracted driving installing more technology to help with getting peoples mind off the phone or radio and onto the road not just for their safety only but for everybody around them at that time. In the article “Solutions to Texting and Driving” they state; Apple unveiled the much-anticipated feature for iOS 11 that allows the iPhone to minimize distractions while driving. If you have an iPhone, it’s one of the best ways to reduce the temptation to check your phone when it “dings” or rings (“The Solutions to Texting and Driving”). With this feature it will allow you not to feel pressured to take your eyes off the road and look down when your phone goes off because you won’t know that it went off because it won’t notify you and it will stay silent. The iPhone can sense when you’re in the car and can automatically turn on the do not disturb feature so that you don’t have to worry about it when you take off. According to EverQuote, between Sept. 19, 2017, and Oct. 25, 2017, approximately 80% of EverDrive users with iPhones adopted the Do Not Disturb driving feature. And 75% of those who do use the feature believe it does make them safer drivers. Phone use among drivers with the feature turned on decreased by 8% (Baig 1). It has been shown that this feature has been improving the rates of distracted driving by decreasing the percentage of distracted driving and people actually seem to like the feature and think that it helps a lot
The government and all states have gotten into trying to decrease the rates of distracted driving by implementing laws to lean away from texting while driving. Center for Disease Control and Prevention stated that, Most U.S. states ban texting while driving, and a growing number also ban the use of hand-held devices (“CDC - Motor Vehicle Safety at Work: Topics: Distracted Driving at Work - NIOSH”). Drivers of commercial motor vehicles (e.g., large trucks and buses) are not allowed to send or read texts while driving or use a hand-held device while driving (1). With banning the use of cell phones while driving it is supposed to keep people from being on their phone to keep the percentage of crashes caused by phones down, but most people don’t follow rules no matter if they can kill someone because of it or not. It's just like speeding, speeding on the roads is against the law and you can get tickets for it but that doesn't seem to stop someone from speeding no matter how many tickets they have.
Camus and Absurdity
The absurdist philosopher Albert Camus stated that individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence while also defiantly continuing to explore and search for meaning (“Absurdism”). Absurdism can relate to the distracted driving epidemic because the insane amount of people that are hurt or killed from this epidemic is out the roof for something that could easily be prevented. Distracted driving is all about the choice of getting on your phone or just doing anything to get distracted while driving and putting other people around you at risk for your poor choices that you decided to make. This whole epidemic could be avoided if people would just think about how they could hurt others from their choices, and this is why I think Camus would be disappointed with this epidemic because it is something that can be easily prevented but people just don’t make the right choices behind the wheel.
Conclusion
This epidemic is important in the world for the simple fact that people can make the choice to act on distracted driving and can hurt many people around them just from that one choice to not pay attention to the road while behind the wheel. Distracted Driving is not caused by just a phone, it can also be caused by eating, messing with the radio, having a bunch of people in the car, smoking, drinking, etc. Just try to make a simple choice by only paying attention to the road when driving to make sure that everyone stays safe no matter what.
Works Cited
“Absurdism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism.
Andrew.currin.ctr@dot.gov. “U Drive. U Text. U Pay.” NHTSA, 20 Dec. 2018, www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving.
Baig, Edward C. “'Do Not Disturb While Driving' Is Actually Getting People to Put down Their Phones.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 18 Apr. 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/04/18/distracted-driving-feature-inside-do-not-disturb-while-driving-feature-inside-iphones-help-keep-you/527613002/.
“Benz: Benz Patent Motor Car.” Mercedes, 18 Dec. 2014, www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/classic/history/benz-patent-motor-car/.
“CDC - Motor Vehicle Safety at Work: Topics: Distracted Driving at Work - NIOSH.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov/niosh/motorvehicle/topics/distracteddriving/default.html.
Fox, Sam. “Teen Kills 10-Year-Old Girl and Father of 3 While Texting and Driving.” AOL, AOL.COM, 20 Oct. 2015, 11:53, www.aol.com/article/2015/10/20/teen-kills-10-year-old-girl-and-father-of-3-while-texting-and-d/21251526/.
Fruhlinger, Josh. “A Brief History of Distracted Driving.” ITworld, ITworld, 2 Dec. 2013, www.itworld.com/article/2822874/130453-A-brief-history-of-distracted-driving.html#slide2.
Laukkonen, Jeremy. “A Brief History of the Car Radio.” Lifewire, Lifewire, 22 Oct. 2018, www.lifewire.com/brief-history-of-the-car-radio-534718.
“Motor Vehicle Safety.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9 June 2017, www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/index.html.
SafeStart. “Top 10 Causes of Distracted Driving-and What They All Have in Common.” SafeStart, SafeStart, 10 July 2014, safestart.com/news/top-10-causes-distracted-driving-and-what-they-all-have-common/.
“Texting and Driving Accident 2018 Statistics | Walkup Law Offices.” Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, 30 Aug. 2018, www.walkuplawoffice.com/2018/08/31/texting-and- driving-accident-2018-statistics/.
“The Solution to Texting and Driving.” TextNinja, textninja.com/solutions-to-texting-and-driving/.
No comments:
Post a Comment