A year or two ago MTV had this show "One Bad Choice" and, basically, it showed you real life examples of how your life can change from just one bad choice. I remember that one story in particular was about a guy named Reggie Shaw. In 2006, Shaw was involved in a car crash that ended up killing two men. It would soon come to light that the then 19 year old had been texting (as much as 11 texts) while driving. This led to his home state of Utah passing a law on texting and driving where, if you were convicted, you would spend up to 15 years in prison. In addition to that, you would also have to pay a $10,000 fine.
Now, I would be lying if I said that I suddenly became a distracted driving advocate after watching this episode. I mean, I felt bad for the guy and I learned a lot. It's just that when something doesn't happen to you and you're just watching it on TV, it can go right over your head. It wasn't until this summer that the topic of distracted driving came back into my life.
You see, I have been applying for scholarships and I came across one that talked about distracted driving. Basically, the organization wanted you to answer the question which asked if distracted driving was worse than drunk driving. I thought that I could answer that because I already knew a little bit about the subject, but, of course, I had to do a bit more research. That's when I learned just how big of an issue it actually was.
I learned that the term distracted driving did not just apply to texting while driving. I came across the story of Amanda Kloehr who had been in a 2008 car accident. Now she didn't remember actually what had distracted her, she just knew that she had been distracted. Unlike Reggie Shaw, there were no fatalities -- thankfully. The only person that was seriously injured by Amanda's actions was Amanda herself. She had to go through several facial reconstructive surgeries and spent months in the hospital after the incident.
Both accidents are extremely different, but the one thing that they do have in common is that they were driving while distracted. Unfortunately, Reggie and Amanda's stories are not the only ones out there. Many more people in the United States and even the world have had an experience where they were involved in a distracted driving incident. The sad part about it is that distracted driving is still such a big problem. There are so many laws that have been put in place to crack down on drunk driving since 1910. The first law that was related to distracted driving did not come into effect until 2007 when the state of Washington put a texting ban in place.
Now I can say that I am definitely an opponent of distracted driving. This is something that is not seen as that big of a problem because people think that they can multitask. Attempting to text or something while driving is dangerous and could put anyone's life at risk. Thankfully, the issue seems to be getting more and more attention. Even recently since that story broke about that woman being caught texting while steering her car with her feet.
Crazy how far so people will go just to answer a text message...
