There are an infinite number of stupid things that people can do. Idiots somehow come up with more and more every day. Just to list a few: wrestling with a baby bear, hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, making it a habit to jump out of windows, eating glue, attacking your principal or boss with a paint gun with no mask, getting drunk before an interview, or sticking your hand into a fire. Now, you are (hopefully) wondering how any person could do any of these because these things are just that stupid. I wonder this everyday; because to me, texting while driving is just as stupid.
Taking your eyes off the road to check your cell phone, reading a text sent to you, and replying by typing on a tiny keyboard while you are trying to steer a two ton vehicle moving at forty miles per hour is one of the most counter-intuitive things I’ve ever heard of. If you do the math, looking at a text for just five seconds, while going fifty-five mph, you will travel over eighty feet without having looked at the road. Even though texting while driving is illegal and more importantly just plain stupid, forty-three percent of teenagers still do it. Teenagers aka: new drivers. Great.
Texting while driving means taking your eyes of the road and focusing on something extremely trivial which can have disastrous results for any driver, especially a new one. And what happens when you don’t watch the road: you can easily swerve off. If you are stopped at a red light and think to yourself “Oh hey, the car is stopped it’s ok to text right now” you are WRONG. Imagine you are looking down and focusing on texting when you hear a honk behind you. You quickly glance up and see the light had turned green and you stomp on the gas to appease the angry driver behind you. You hit a kid. Congratulations, a kid just died because you could not wait till you stopped driving to text your friend.
Ok, I know, the killing a kid argument is pretty extreme -- but it could happen! And even if you don’t kill a person, you could run into a tree, a wall, or another car. Texting makes it twenty-three times more likely that you will crash. Do you want to total your car? Car repairs are ridiculously expensive and think of it that way: is this text Eric just sent you really worth a three-hundred dollar repair for a taillight? (The answer is no.) It isn’t worth the money, it isn’t worth the risk, and it isn’t worth the wrath you will get from your parents.
I am a teenager myself. I love to text; I do it all the time. But, you will NEVER see me text and drive; I’m not an idiot -- are you?
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