Why Do People Text and Drive?

You may have heard about texting and driving. Texting while driving, it’s such a part of our daily lives now to just be on our mobile phones. We bet a lot of you are reading this right now on your phone. What if you murder someone today?

This is worse than being drunk, it was worse than being high, worse than being sleep deprived. Turns out it’s a nightmare. 

You can be a very responsible text and driver. For example only use the voice to text. Texting while driving, in our opinion, is as dangerous as drinking while driving or being impaired by any substance.

Using your phone and driving

Texting and driving is dangerous

Using you phone while driving, is an addiction and lots of people don’t think they can quit it. Distracted driving is very dangerous. It just takes a split second to be distracted where a traffic collision can occur. Don’t just casually use you phone while I drive.

Even if you avert your attention from the wheel for four to five seconds, this is extremely dangerous. Facebooking and driving. Twittering and driving. Googling and driving. “Let’s refresh Instagram, see if anything’s new!”

One thing you shouldn’t do is text while driving. You must put your phone in your bag while you drive. What happens if someone tries to call you? Don’t answer. Car crashes are the number one cause of accidental deaths for our young people.

An experiment

We need to do everything we can to prevent driving deaths

In a experiment to see what happens when you text and drive, we set up 538 cones in a complicated traffic course. We have some rules. One, you must respond to every single text message. Two, Don’t stop moving. Don’t stop texting.

The drivers felt like their eyes were not on the road at all. Driving is very complex, so although we get used to it, it becomes a habit after time, there’s a lot going on in our brain when we’re trying to drive safely. There are already a number of distractions that are going to take our mind away from focusing at the wheel.

We’re thinking about these things constantly. These things are already enough distractions. Our mind is now very focused on something that’s not in front of us.

Are you a red light texter? You get to that intersection, pull out that phone? You have red lights all the time. We do see motorist manipulating their cell phones at red lights and that’s also against the law. 

Cars that don’t move at green lights contribute to traffic collisions because people are trying to go around.

Texting and driving is illegal

Why do we text and drive?

People can get very excited about what they’re seeing on the phone. We get a big dopamine rush, and that causes us to feel good and feel pleasure. When we’re feeling pleasure we want to do something like continuing to do that activity. But if you’re trying to drive while you’re doing that activity, that becomes a very dangerous situation.

We’re still not calling a phone addiction a true addiction but it has that same quality. People still get excited, there’s still a dopamine release which is that pleasure chemical in your brain.

Your judgements going to be impaired, your reflexes are going to be slowed down, your coordination is going to be impaired. This is when people are out of lanes. They’re have been multiple car crashes and accident seen because they’re looking for something else.

You’re driving metal and plastic, that weighs 3,000 pounds that can easily be converted into a weapon. It is a privilege to get your driver’s license and drive. It is not a right. With that privilege it’s an awesome responsibility.

Doapmine rush

If we check our Facebook and we get a lot of likes, that causes a big dopamine rush. Not being able to look in front of you, you’re going to run into problems. You don’t know how much damage you will cause.

People die when you text and drive

When you’re texting you’re not looking at the road. When you’re not looking at the road you can’t drive. Voice to text is a lot less dangerous than looking at what you’re typing. The scariest think about texting and driving is that you don’t care what happened. When you are on your phone your world shrinks to that size. If you think you are the exception you might become a statistic.

Fear of missing out

We would beg you to take baby steps to move in the right direction, that is because we are addicted to our phones. They do not belong in the car and it is only going to get worse. They are all dangerous. Dead is dead, it does not make a difference how you ended up losing a life. It’s so dangerous, so just be careful out there.

Smartphones want you to to do everything, all of the time. When you have notifications going off all of the time, it makes you want to check your phone regularly. If you don’t message back, or check out a new story quickly, or comment on a friend’s post immediately, you think that you are going to miss out on something. This is called Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO. You just need to get over that fear, because if you die in a car crash because you have been texting and driving, then you are going to be missing out on the rest of your life.

Look at what you’re doing, pay attention to the road, don’t get distracted, keep your phone on your bag, somewhere where you aren’t able to reach for it if you get too excited.

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