January 19, 2011

Sixteen: the year kids get the responsibility to drive a car. It’s the year they have big blow out birthday parties to celebrate and get to test drive three different cars before they find the perfect one for them. Sixteen-year-old drivers are “four times more likely to be involved in a motor vehicle crash than 20-24-year-old drivers,” according to a survey conducted by The Medical News.

While 16 to 19 year olds only make up about 5% of the driving population, they are the ones that text the most. Texting might be the main way of communication for teen and young adults now-a-days, but texting at the wrong time could get you or someone else killed. Communication is a key part of survival, but there is a right place and right time for texting, and driving while texting is certainly not one of them, it is by far one the most dangerous and distracting things to do while driving.

There are so many way to drive dangerously and among them is texting. “Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves,” (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). While speed may seem dangerous, it is no way in comparison to text and driving. When some is texting behind the wheel, they are putting other passengers in the car in danger, as well as other drivers on the road in danger.

Distracted drivers at almost at deadly as drunk drivers, “Using a cell phone while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent,” (University of Utah). Other than being cognitively distracting, thinking about what a text message says, the driver is also visually distracted from taking their eyes off the road as well as manually distracted from holding the cell phone.