By Staff
Driving a car isn’t a God-given right.
It’s a privilege.
That being said, teenagers may not like it, but driving and talking on the phone shouldn’t be mixed. They shouldn’t be mixed for adults either, but teenagers are considered even more at risk.
More than 40 new state laws went into effect this month, and two of them tackle these issues. Others were aimed at drunken driving and underage drinking.
Cell-phone use by drivers under the age of 18 is now limited. No person driving with a graduated driver’s license may use a mobile telephone except when communicating in an emergency situation and/or communicating with a parent, legal guardian or spouse.
We see where enforcement of the law may be an issue, but at least it’s a good step.
Because the leading cause of teenage deaths in North Carolina is traffic collisions, Action for Children and State Farm are targeting teenagers with the distribution of a safe-driving fact sheet. Statewide partners targeted to distribute those fact sheets include the Governor’s Highway Safety Program, the State Highway Patrol, El Pueblo, Inc., the N.C. Sheriff’s Association, SafeKids, the N.C. High School Athletic Association, the N.C. PTA, the School Resource Office Association and the Drivers’ Ed Teachers Association, among others. We hope they are read by teens and not just tossed away.
Teens may feel that they are invincible. They aren’t. Every year in America, nearly 6,000 teenagers are killed in car crashes. Nearly 300,000 are injured. In the war in Iraq, some 3,800 American men and women have died since the war began in 2003. That is a sobering statistic.
Text messaging, or “texting” by teenagers, a driving distraction related to cell-phone use, was the subject of an August 2006 Teens Today survey conducted by the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety and Students Against Destructive Decisions. The survey showed that teens considered sending text messages via cell phones to be their biggest distraction, according to the report. Of the teens surveyed, 37 percent said that text messaging was extremely or very distracting, while 20 percent said that they were distracted by their emotional states and 19 percent said that having friends in the car was distracting. The January survey by Nationwide found that 19 percent of motorists said they send text messages while driving.
Talk to the parents of a child who was killed in an accident. Talk to the child of a parent who was so busy talking on the phone that he or she didn’t see that car in front of them.
Try to picture a life unfinished, a life that was cut short in the blink of an eye.
It’s not worth it.