We’ve all driven while we were tired. There’s just no way around it. I remember driving home from work on Interstate 40 when I was younger and being so sleepy that the tail-lights from the vehicles on the road with me were one long blur. How I made it home, I’ll never know. And we’ve all driven while we were teen-agers, and thank goodness we’re here to tell the tale, too! I used to come home from MTSU on old Highway 231 (before the days of I-840) and pass everything in front of me, just because I was a stupid kid and I could.
One thing I hope you haven’t done, and will beat into your kid’s heads to not do, is text while driving. The public service ads are right, there is no text that could possibly be sent in this world that has to be checked right then and there. If you’re waiting for some groundbreaking info via text and you just have to know what it says, then pull over at the next exit and check it. I don’t text alot, it just gives me a headache. If someone wants to send an email, great. If it’s an emergency, then call me. I don’t really get into this hybrid of texting. But so many people do. I see the people in my office walk around holding their phones – constantly. I hardly ever see them talking on them, they’re texting. Texting is quick, there’s no time involved, there’s no real discussion or wondering “ok, I’m done talking – how do I wrap this call up”? You just send or get your information and get on with life.
The National Transportation and Highway Safety Administration has studies that indicate that people who text and drive have a 25% slower response rate than people who are high on marijuana. They have an impairment while driving that makes them roughly as dangerous as someone with a .15 (almost twice the legal limit) blood alcohol limit. Think about it, you can’t keep your eyes on the road and read or send a text, you have to look at and focus on the keypad of the phone. You are not in control of your vehicle during that time. Last year I was on my way to work on Coles Ferry Pike in Lebanon and I noticed a car coming at me that was drifting ever so slightly into my lane. The closer they got, the more in my lane they were. I was at an area of the road that had hardly any shoulder at all, just a drop off into a pond. About the time I swerved and heard gravel, she looked up, saw me and jerked her car back over. She had a phone in her hand and a look of terror on her face. We were genuinely seconds aways from a head on collision or me going airborne off the road into a pond with about a 20 foot drop off.
I think we ought to reconsider our values when we’re thinking about texting. Do we really have to have that phone with us contantly? Do we have to check it while we’re talking to other people, while we’re at dinner, or while we’re driving? It’s now illegal in Tennessee to text and drive. If you’re wondering how they will know that you were, it’s easy. If you get pulled over or have a wreck and they think you were texting, they confiscate your phone. If there is a message that corresponds with the stop or the accident, they charge you with it.
Set a good example for our kids and let’s make the roads a bit safer for each other. Pay attention to the road. You’re driving a very heavy very large machine that can kill if mishandled. Check your kid’s phones when they get home (really? you’re letting your kids have their privacy and not checking behind them? Good luck with that!). If you know they were on the road 10 minutes before they get home and there is a text sent five minutes before they pull in the driveway, then address it. Better to make them angry than to lose them, or to have them cause an accident that will haunt them for all their lives.