Sunday, February 14, 2010

phones and driving

For this week’s blog entry I decided to touch upon texting and driving and the negative outcomes that could come along with it. I choose this to write about because I myself have had a bad outcome from texting and driving. This experience happened around last summer one morning on my way to school. I had left my house around 7:48am and had to be in class by 8:00am, so I was running kind of late. I rushed out of the house and peeled out of the driveway. On this early morning me and my girl had gotten into a nasty fight and were fighting through text messaging. I was getting angry and frustrated and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing on the road, but naturally I was driving at a fast speed in order to make it to my scheduled class on time.


After I had pulled out on to state route 79 here in Heath, the conversation on the phone had reached a boiling point and I had no focus on my surroundings in the car. So as I was sitting at a red light waiting for it to turn green, I was also waiting on another bitchy text message. The light turned green eventually and I peeled out yet again. After I had taken off, I then got the text message I’d been waiting for and without hesitation preceded to respond. Not paying attention to the road, I glanced up from my phone and cars were pulling right out in front of me. I had liked a split second to turn and try and dodge the turning vehicles. I panicked and swerved the wheel to the left and barley got past a Honda CR-V before it nicked my rear end. After calming down after the shock that just happened, I realized that it had been my fault for the near collision. I had run the red light because I hadn’t been paying attention to the road or the traffic lights. It’s so easy to get caught up in your phone and have no clue about the things going on around you. I could have easily been killed had I not looked up at that exact moment. Texting and driving can be really dangerous. You may not think so until you yourself have a personal experience.

5 comments:

  1. There are a lot of negative outcomes with texting and driving. I have never had a problem with texting and driving. Although I do text a little bit while I drive. If I do I try really hard to keep the text really short. I think also when people are mad and frustrated we tend to speed up and care less about our safely while driving. Another bad habit is when we are in a hurry. We don’t really think when we are driving we just try to get their as fast as we can. So when we put the two together it is bad.

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  2. I ahve to agree with this blog. not for the reason that i almost had an bad experience while texting and driving. its just that when some one is texting they arent aware of anything but that text message. I used to text and drive but that was with my old phone. I had texted so much that I didnt have to look at the phone but to read the text. I could text without looking at the phone and know what i was saying. But when i got my new phone that is touch screen i dont text and drive anymore unless i feel as though its an important text message.

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  3. I agree that texting and driving can be a bad thing. I tend to lose focus while texting when im driving as well. Although i myself have not been in an accident while driving, i have also had a dangerous experience. While driving home from a skate trip, my friend was driving while the rest were sleeping in the back. He ended up texting his friend while driving and we almost got hit by a motorcycle. He had to swerve to avoid the collision and he ended up damaging his car by driving up a curb. Texing while driving is not a good idea.

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  4. Hmm. Don't most phones give us the option to respond to a text by calling? I wonder if we are choosing texting because we don't want to be bothered by talking to the person over the phone. If it's true that we don't want to be bothered, why is it we just don't wait until we are not driving? (I'm including myself and my few texting/driving incidents here.)

    Pics? Links?

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  5. Plus, I wonder if Kelsey has a response in her blog for this post . . .

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