A Dangerous Habit

Technology has become a big part in today’s society, which has led to more and more people giving their attention to a cell phone rather than the road. Texting while driving caused severe injuries in over 330,000 car accidents. Even though technology is everywhere, it should not be a priority when driving. Most of the car accidents involve a teenager who was texting while driving. Texting and driving is not the only way to get into a car accident, all types of distracted driving increase the chances of getting into a car crash. Car accidents are mainly caused by drivers that think they can multitask while driving.

Texting while driving increases the chances of getting into a car accident. When a driver takes his eyes off of the road they are at risk of not only hitting a car, but they could hit a pedestrian as well. The driver is not looking around to make sure no one is walking in front of their car, or if another car swerved into the same lane as them. “Texting and driving is 6 times more likely to get you in an accident than drunk driving” (Ameen). A drunk driver is all kinds of impaired, for example, slow reaction time, lack of coordination, reduced concentration, decreased vision, and has poor judgement. Texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk, meaning a driver that is texting has the same or even more impairments than those of a drunk driver. 1 out of 4 accidents are caused by texting and driving, it only took about 3 seconds to stop paying attention to the road in order to get into an accident (Ameen). The chances of getting into a car accident is increased by 23 times whenever a driver is texting(Ameen). To reduce the amount of people that text and drive, adults should teach their kids that texting while driving is very dangerous, and could kill them.

A teenager on the road is like a new fish in the ocean, they do not have the experience or knowledge about the dangers on the road. Teenagers are the main cause of accidents that involved texting. Although 94% of the teenagers know the dangers of texting while driving, 35% of those 94% still do it (Ameen). They know the dangers but do not understand that in a split second their life or someone else’s life can end just because they had the need to reply to a text. 55% of teenagers think they can manage texting while driving but in reality they can not(Ameen). 11 teenagers die every day because they were texting and driving, proving that teenagers cannot manage texting while driving (Ameen). It is humanly impossible to give your full attention to two things at once and driving requires all of your attention. After taking your mind off of the road, you will not have the same reaction time as you did before, ”a study at the University of Utah found out that the reaction time for a teen using a cell phone is the same as that of a 70 year old who isn’t using one” (Ameen).