Phones & Driving

It seems like in today's society the use of technology has had a drastic increase of usage from 10 years ago when smartphones first started to rise into play. Americans today just seem to be looking down for about 70% of their day always twiddling their fingers on a screen. In fact there are over 8 trillion text and 6 billion calls being sent out each year in America's society recorded in 2017. Technology has allowed us to freely communicate without too much trouble whether it's a friend or a family member or such there seems to be a con with phones and driving. Although it resonates more in teens, adults aren't off the hook either on this dilemma. Over 1.6 million car crashes happened in the year of 2017 and 390,000 of them being seriously injured or even resulted in death. Although bluetooth advertises for "hands free calls and text," it doesn't seem to do us justice in the end.

Since the teens are in the later generations they are raised to live with technology in their pockets and has unfortunately poured too much into the glass where they make the results fatal in technology. Although they are more than aware of the dangers of using a cellular device while using a motorized vehicle, roughly about 90% still use a mobile device while driving. So they have an uncontrollable urge when they hear their notification go off to check their messages.

And nowadays with snapchat, whatsapp, instagram, facebook, imessage, and discord, it makes it simply almost impossible for the average teenager to put their phone away from their person 90% of the time. Not to mention, when they have a tendency to charge their phone 24/7 and start to freak out when their phone is at 99% battery life. Roughly around 15 percent of drivers have resulted in serious injury crashes. It may seem like a low number but imagine having 400,000 people a year and growing since 2015 getting seriously hurt and 476 people that have fatalities Not only just the drivers but also 40% of them being passengers of people using their phones being the driver. That being of boys and girls of the ages ranging between 15-19 years old.

Now although teens are more prone to car crashes while using their devices, adults are just as guilty of the use of their devices while driving. Over 440,000 adults result in an accident of being a distracted driver in the year of 2015 and numbers are growing just as much as the teens. And around 3000 of those people end in a fatality. So with these statistics we can infer that even adults can be more dangerous than the teenager. Adults may not use their device as much as a teen does but they do tend to use it more on the road cause they feel as if they are more "experienced," so they feel that they can confidently focus on their phone while also focusing on the road. The reality is that they even miss some rookie stuff that the average teenager does while driving when they use their cellular device.

Now although they don't seem like real high numbers, even a loss of one life is tragic. Imagine how the families felt when they had lost their child to a car accident involving the use of a cellular device. Even the friends that it had probably impacted or even the friends that they probably knew but never talked to but now regret not talking to them much cause they're gone now. I feel like as the time has passed by over the years car accidents have been put off to the side just a bit because they occur more often now as they used to and now it's just a "normal occurrence." Personally i think it's the influence of the adults, i dont think its too much of the children's fault cause the numbers do say that the adult have more conflict with this problem then the teens do. Technology is supposed to be a place for innovation and convenience to the individual and even more as time goes on. But over the years even when people didn't have phones the numbers of accidents have increased as technology has evolved. Instead of the world advancing the world is falling backwards.

Rhee 2