Rules of the road for dummies: Dangers of texting and driving

By Emma Cox

Texting and driving, you are immediately classified as an idiot if you do this.

You must lack even the slightest ounce of common sense if you think it’s a good idea to pull out your cell phone and respond to a text or Snapchat while operating a moving vehicle. It just irritates me how stupid people can be to do this. Not only are you risking your own life, but you are also risking the lives of others. Do you really want to be responsible for causing a fatal accident and potentially going to jail for vehicular homicide?

It is not worth it. Put your phone down. They didn’t make a law to not text and drive for no reason.

I get it has been a huge controversy since smart phones came about, but people need to take it seriously and wait to get on their phone. If it is super important, then pull to the side of the road or in a parking lot. No text, Snapchat, phone call, or video chat is worth taking someone’s life.

Which brings me to the two almost-incidents that I have had where the other driver was too busy on their phone and not watching the road.

The first almost-wreck occurred when I was with my best friend, headed to her house. There is a dirt road by the country club that curves around really tight, and I kid you not, this girl coming from the opposite direction of us was obviously looking down at her phone and merged onto our side of the road.  If my friend didn’t blare her horn, we would have been hit head on.  I certainly hope that girl learned her lesson.

Another time was a Sunday morning when I was headed to work around 10 a.m. I was taking what we call a “back road,” because it is a straight path from my house to work. I am about two minutes away, and there is a spot on the side of the road on the left hand side where a truck was parked in the small drive they had made to feed cattle.  There was a girl driving the opposite of me once again and can you guess what she was doing?

That’s right, she was on her phone.

The road we were on has a small hill and because she wasn’t paying attention, and on her side of the road, she was coming down the hill and almost hit me head on. I slammed on my horn as soon as I saw her, and she quickly turned her wheel and threw her hands up at me as if I was in the wrong.

The people in the truck I had mentioned earlier looked over at the lady when I honked my horn and their jaws just dropped because they knew what could have potentially happened.
I hope she learned her lesson too.

So to that I say, put down your phone, you idiot!

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