“Texting and driving is very irresponsible. I don’t do it and I never will,” says junior Patrick Bonner.
How often do you play loud music, make phone calls, text your friends, or look at your friends in the backseat? According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, distracted driving caused 16% of all fatal crashes in 2008. In 2009, 20% of injury crashes were involved in distracted driving. Now some people may think 16% and 20% isn’t a big number, while others beg to differ. Distracted driving takes away a lot of your attention from the road. It includes talking/texting on your cell phone, doing your makeup, eating, and using the Internet and listening to loud music.
“I try not to text while driving unless it’s important and I started a bad habit of looking at my iPhone for music all the time,” says senior Kimo Scilingo. In April 2010, NY state launched the “Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other” enforcement program. During four enforcement waves over the course of a year, Syracuse police issued 9,587 citations for violations involving talking or texting on cell phones while driving.
On May 18, 2008, Jacy Good had graduated from Muhlenberg College at age 23. In that same day she had lost her parents due to someone else’s mistake. According to Oprah’s segment on her story, an 18-year-old man was texting while driving and ran a stoplight, he swerved and hit into the Good’s station wagon. Both her parents died while she suffered from severe body and head trauma. She had a 10% survival chance. Jacy was held in the hospital for four months until she was released in September. The past couple years she has been devoted to physical and occupational therapy trying to make her body function normally again.
Driving is very serious; there shouldn’t be any distractions. If there were less distractions there wouldn’t be so many accidents. Many people think texting and driving is easy to do, but if you’re not looking at the road how do you know where you’re going? The easiest thing to do is put your phone on silent. Is that text worth your life?