Something and Driving

If you haven't watched From One Second To The Next, a short documentary by Werner Herzog, it's an incredibly heart-wrenching half-hour. It's right on Netflix, I highly recommend giving it a viewing. In case the title of the blogpost didn't give it away, it's about the hazards and devastating results to texting and driving. 

It's an easy enough warning to dismiss. Anyone with a cell phone is familiar with the pull of just checking something quickly, or responding to a text, or getting bored while waiting for traffic. Some are better than others at building the discipline to ignore it, or pull over to address the phone. I remember when I was really good at this. It was back when I had my first smartphone. I wasn't completely won over by texting at the time - it was still pretty new to me. If people wanted to get in touch with me, they called. If I wanted to answer, I pulled over, or I waited until I was at my destination before I returned the call. 

Now when I'm on long drives by myself, I'll queue up the phone call on the side of the road and then start talking. When I'm at stoplights, the urge to fill the lull by just checking for notifications is tough to brush off. I found myself making some excuses about how I'm not nearly as bad as I could be, that there are people way worse. And there are, to be sure. I'll be driving and see people, from a wide spread of age groups, either on a phone call or texting while driving. I'm better than that, I'd think. I use headphones when doing phone calls. I keep my hands free and my eyes on the road. And while that's all well and good, that doesn't mean I'm avoiding distractions every way I can when driving. That doesn't excuse the occasional glance at my phone, just to see what that alert is for, or who that text was from. I'm not even responding, but that's attention removed from the task at hand. The 'navigating my metal death machine down the road through a stream of other metal death machines at high speeds' task, which definitely gets downplayed the longer one is a driver.

But, as much as mass media would like to have you believe that smartphones are the bane of modern existence, they are not the only threat to driving safety. Everyone knows not to drink and drive, and yet people still do that. In fact, driving under the influence of any sort of uncontrolled substance is more common practice than anyone wants to believe. 

If everyone knows this, why am I writing about it? Because recently I saw a person driving while reading a newspaper. I wish I could say this was the first time I'd seen someone throwing a giant sheet of paper up against their steering wheel while rolling down the road. Apparently books are another option. Tablets too. One person was so emphatic in their button mashing on whatever game they were playing on their Nintendo DS that they accidentally honked their horn and startled themselves into dropping the video game while in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Sure, smartphones are fantastic little devices. They are useful tools that give access to so much in daily life. And they are leaders in distraction. Sometimes it's just rude - taking texts or pictures at inappropriate times. When driving, it's deadly. But humanity has found ways to enable distractions that cannot be blamed on the new age of technology, too. In thinking about this, I've worked to re-evaluate my own driving safety habits. Take a moment to consider what your distractions are, and figure out safe ways to address them. 

Please, be careful out there.