Don't Touch the Screen

As we drove to the final basketball game of the season against our rivals Milton High School, I was having a great time with my best friend. Paige and I were stopped at the intersection on Highway 9 when a white SUV crashed into the back of her Nissan Rogue. We were both rushed to the hospital where my friend learned that her leg was broken in two places. Paige could not finish the rest of her swim season and was absolutely devastated. We later found out that the driver behind us was looking down at her cell phone and didn't notice that the light had turned red. The driver's one second of distracted driving affected my best friend's life for months although, thankfully, her use of a cell phone did not end it. As a result of the risk to the public, drivers should not be allowed to use handheld cell phones while operating a vehicle.

Operating a vehicle requires attention and focus. Anything that interrupts a driver's concentration leads to a dangerous distraction. Three main types of distracted driving are visual, manual, and cognitive. Drivers who text and drive, snap and drive, instagram and drive, or simply call home while driving are endangering the public. Texting while driving is particularly harmful because it combines all three types of distracted driving . According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drivers who send or read a text while driving lose concentration and take their eyes off the road for up to five seconds. Those five seconds of using a handheld cell phone are a great risk to the public.

Statistics show that using a handheld phone while operating a moving vehicle risks the welfare of the public. In "Cell Phone Use and Driving," Louis Hugo Francescutti states that using a cell phone while driving increases the risk of collisions four to six times, and drivers are twice as often to be in a rear-end collision. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that nine people are killed each day, and the public is involved in more than one-thousand car crashes due to distracted driving. Francescutti writes that researchers believe that distracted driving causes twenty-five to ninety percent of car collisions. Clearly, these statistics demonstrate the danger of distracted driving.

Although distracted driving causes over four thousand deaths each year, there are solutions to this tragedy. One obvious solution is not using the phone at all while driving; however, other possible solutions include the use of bluetooth and phone mounts to decrease the number of deaths. Since driving requires attention and focus, making the choice not to use the phone while driving limits the risk to the driver and to the public. When absolutely necessary, the use of bluetooth and phone mounts can offer drivers phone access while still protecting the public. These two alternatives should only be used in case of an emergency.

Clearly, operating a vehicle while using a handheld cell phone is dangerous. Georgia recognized these dangers and passed legislation to prevent the use of handheld devices when driving; however, some drivers fail to follow the law. The driver who caused my accident received a citation for using her device while driving. Hopefully, the next time she goes out on the road she will think about the danger to others and act responsibly.

Works Cited

"Distracted Driving." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

https://www. cdc. gov/motorvehiclesafety/Distracted_Driving/index. html.

Accessed 19 Mar. 2020.

Francescutti, Louis Hugo. "Cell Phone Use and Driving." Encyclopedia of Lifestyle Medicine &

Health, edited by James M. Rippe, vol. 1, SAGE Reference, 2012, pp. 208-209.

Gale eBooks, https://link. gale. com/apps/doc/CX1959000076/GVRL?u=milt91939&sid=GVRL&xid=4867445f. Accessed 18 Mar. 2020.