Well, Just at the Stoplight!

That’s exactly the response a senior friend gave to me when I asked her if she ever texted while dri­ving. It was actu­ally quite amus­ing see­ing the divide that sin­gle answer brought: the nods of agree­ment from the seniors, and the shocked, almost hor­ri­fied, faces of the sopho­mores– the sopho­mores, who had just fin­ished Dri­vers Ed. (Just to clar­ify, Dri­vers Edu­ca­tion is not a class known for teach­ing one how to drive, but rather for teach­ing one to be scared of driving.)

After a few years, or maybe even just a few months, it becomes com­mon to for­get the hor­rors we all dis­cov­ered dur­ing our Dri­vers Ed period or per­haps, as is likely in many cases, we’ve sim­ply pushed it to the back of our minds with the pop­u­lar teenage mind­set of irdc and who really does.

It’s easy to for­get cau­tion espe­cially when encour­aged by even the mere pres­ence of friends. But, truth be told, isn’t it funny how all of those nasty, cars-rolling-over-fires-exploding-people-being-ripped-apart crashes seemed to almost always hap­pen at those few moments in which peo­ple aren’t pay­ing atten­tion? Such as, those few sec­onds when you’re texting?

Let’s employ a cer­tain type of logic here. The amount of time that you’re tex­ting, or the amount of time that you’re twist­ing around to talk to some­one in the back seat, or the amount of that you’re watch­ing with fas­ci­na­tion at the amaz­ing lit­tle tri­an­gle on your wind­shield that the wipers just can’t seem to touch; it’s not very long, is it? Just a few sec­onds. At the same time, the per­cent­age of crashes that hap­pen while peo­ple are dis­tracted and not pay­ing as much atten­tion on the road as they should is scar­ily high. Well over 50%, which basi­cally means, that’s a ton of crashes. So!

That equals a really big chance that you’re going to crash dur­ing those six sec­onds. Sorry.

So, now, please don’t text and drive? Thank you.