The Horror of Distracted Driving

Pete Luna / The San Antonio Express-News via AP file

Wednesday, March 29, 2017, was a beautiful day in south central Texas. The temperature was in the mid-eighties and visibility was excellent at nearly ten miles.

Shortly after noon, a church bus with its driver and twelve passengers was returning on US Route 83 from a church retreat. The long, straight highway had a speed limit of 70 mph, which was the speed the bus was thought to be travelling. The passengers, all duly belted into their seats, had no idea who they were about to meet.

Coming the opposite way, but not necessarily in the opposite lane, was Jack Young, 20, in a large, heavy pickup truck also travelling at 70 mph. Mr. Young admitted to checking his text messages at the moment that the two vehicles collided at a combined speed of 140 mph.

One of the church ladies, horribly injured, survived. So, unfortunately, did Mr. Young. Twelve souls in the church bus went to meet their maker that day because Mr. Young felt an irresistible urge to check his phone for text messages.

This horrible incident is regrettably becoming far too common. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA):

“In 2016 alone, 3,450 people were killed. 391,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers in 2015.”

This behavior on the part of the distracted drivers is reprehensible. They are not exercising their civil rights. They are not responding to an emergency. They are not doing anything except to act in a wholly selfish manner, to prioritize their need to check their phone over your very survival. If you aren’t outraged, perhaps you should rethink this.

There are few among you, dear readers, who have not been horrified to see an approaching vehicle veer directly toward you. Most of you are lucky and the oncoming driver woke up at the last second. But many thousands of you die or are mangled. This is unacceptable.

We have been hypnotized lately by the highly publicized spate of school shootings. (Some posit that this very publicity contributes to new maniacal attacks). But for some reason we can’t seem to capture the public’s attention for the far deadlier scourge of distracted drivers.

Why is that? Because guns seem evil but cars and trucks do not? But if you are honest, in neither case is the machine at fault. It is always the fault of the operator. And the actual damage done, almost 3,500 deaths and 391,000 injuries per year, is enormous, far exceeding the emotionally horrific carnage committed by school shooters. Both are horrible. But the damage exacted by distracted drivers is many times greater. Where is the outrage?

It is time to think logically. Think in terms of lives lost, of lives mangled.

The solution is many-fold. Intense police enforcement of the symptoms of distracted driving (phone use, lane departure, tailgating, and other inappropriate driving behaviors). The courts must be equally forceful.

But we also need social pressure, disapproval. If you are riding with someone who checks their phone, yell at them! Express your outrage. Demand to be let out to walk, a far safer course for you.

Does this mean that we slack off on the scourge of school shootings? Of course not. We need to pursue the root causes of psychopathic young males who act out their fantasies. Cultural, mental health, familial – there are many potential causes which must be pursued.

But when we can save hundreds of times more lives by prioritizing the seemingly innocuous act of “distracted driving,” which is actually a monumental uncivil, irresponsible, deadly act, then we must do so. The numbers don’t lie.

The souls of the church ladies plead with us.