Eyes Up!
As a person who likes to drive and drives a lot, just about anywhere I go is a hour-long commitment in the car. The roads are a dangerous and expensive place, with cars weighing from three to five thousand pounds moving at speeds up to seventy miles per hour on interstates, and those numbers only include personal vehicles (not commercial vehicles that share our roads).
With our driving, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that 660,000 people drive while distracted with electronics daily. According to the NHTSA, in 2015 3,477 people had been killed because of distracted driving, and 391,00 people had been injured because of distracted driving. These are terrifying numbers, yet I can understand them since I have seen drivers distracted by their phones and radios everyday.
That being said, I do understand the want to be on your phone. In this world of lightning-fast information, we are urged to stay plugged in all hours of the day to insure we don’t miss anything. This is absolutely no excuse for using electronics and driving. The likelihood of a crash or incidence is massively increased by electronics. Our phone companies have actually started adding fail-safes to protect us from ourselves, incorporating programs like Hey Siri and the Google Assistant that can type and read texts for us. These still distract us, but they do allow us to keep our eyes on the road. Electronic users can also automatically lock their phone when driving over a certain speed.
In the end, it is up to you. It is your choice to not play on your phone while driving.
Driving is up to the drivers; it is your responsibility. Drive safe.
<https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving>
