Phones &Driving

There are three types of distractions, visual, manual, and cognitive. Visual distractions cause you to take your eyes off the road, manual distractions are anything that causes you to take your hands off of your steering wheel, and cognitive distractions are anything that causes you to take your eyes off of the road. Throughout the years, over 3,447 people were killed by distracted drivers. Drivers 20 years old or younger are more susceptible to falling into the ring of distracted drivers. With today's advanced social media platform a new and dangerous trend surfaced the web and went viral. The creators of the app "Snapchat" added a filter to the application that allows users to track their mph speed. This filter promotes distracted driving.

According to the Washington Post, Christal McGee, an 18 year old, was behind the wheel of her father's white Mercedes, on her way home from work on a Thursday night in September 2015, when she pulled out her phone and opened Snapchat. McGee wanted to try the filter out, so McGee, then accelerated some more, reaching 113 miles per hour on a suburban road outside Atlanta and the speed limit was 55. She didn't see Maynard Wentworth, an Uber driver just starting his shift that night, until it was too late. She hit him at 107 miles per hour. Wentworth suffered a traumatic brain injury and was hospitalized for months. McGee was sued and the infamous app was also sued for negligence.

The accidents and lives taken could have been easily prevented and still can. Drivers are encouraged every day to put their phones down when they drive to prevent accidents, but they do not take them seriously. A death of someone at the hands of a distracted driver could easily prevent many deaths. The choice of responding to a text message or saving someone's life should be of no ignorance. As of July 1st, Georgia's Hands Free Law was passed to keep cellphones out of people's hands as they drive.

If drivers' hands and eyes are not on the road at all times because they choose to be distracted by a cellular device, then proper precautions should be taken to keep them off the road.