Weekly Written Analysis 4

Weekly Written Analysis
Cell Phones and Driving
By
Amy Waid



I was browsing through my Womans Day magazine when I came across The Editors Corner article titled “Texting and Driving”. It caught my eye because just recently I had an experience with another driver causing an accident while doing this very same act. I decided to read this article and although it is just an opinion piece I felt it pertained to a lot of the situations that I see on the roads nowadays.
The article starts out by saying that she doesn’t want to lose anyone she loves including herself because of some idiot is either talking or texting while driving (Chesnutt, 2009). I have to agree with that statement especially since I now have a sixteen year old daughter that thinks she is invincible behind the wheel. With statistics on the rise showing that even the slightest distraction can cause an accident, I watch her with a mother’s worry every time she leaves.
I have tried to instill in all of my kids (I have two more within range of driving in the next few years) the dangers lurking while going down the road and to always be alert to what is around them. They were a witness to the accident caused by the texting driver and I am hoping that maybe it drove home some of the advice I had been trying to give them. I also had them read the article I am writing about now, showing them the parts that stated accidents are four times more likely when the driver is distracted and the example of the woman that was almost hit by a texting driver.
With that said, I still worry. Not so much about my sixteen year old driver, who I trust to use her head on most occasions but about the others on the road. The ones that don’t get the lectures that I give her and continue on texting or talking, not realizing how distracted they really are behind the wheel. I truly hope that someday I don’t get the phone call or knock on the door telling me that one of my loved ones got hurt or killed by a distracted driver.



References
Chesnutt, J (2009, July 23). The editor's corner: Texting and driving. Retrieved July 26,
2009, from Womans Day Web site: http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Family-Lifestyle/The-Editor-s-Corner-Texting-and-Driving.html