You’ve probably (hopefully) heard of AT&T’s “It Can Wait” campaign, where the second largest wireless carrier in the nation highlights the dangers of using your phone to text while driving. You might even remember Aaron Baker, previous Editor-in-Chief of PhoneDog.com, doing AT&T’s “It Can Wait” Challenge back in 2012. Texting and driving, as it turns out, is actually just as bad – if not worse – than drinking and driving. Yet because we are not technically under the “influence” of anything, it would seem that many people in this generation have absolutely no qualms with checking their missed notifications while barreling at 65+ mph down the road in a two-ton hunk of metal, along with a bunch of other people in two-ton hunks of metal.
Part of me gets how it gets downplayed. I get why people initially think it’s not that bad. It’s just texting, right? It’s one of the simplest forms of communication that we have. I mean, people talk on the phone and drive just fine all the time, and texts are convenient because you can theoretically look at your phone for a second, glance up, and glance back down. It’s pretty much like you know what’s going on, right?
Except for in reality it’s not like that at all. I understand that your eyes are looking at the road, but even when you’re looking up your brain is still focused on the text, and there's a big difference between looking and focusing; what the other person said or what you’re currently typing is, in your mind, really more important than what’s happening on the road. If it wasn’t more important, it wouldn’t be an issue in the first place.
But we know all of this. We know that texting and driving is inherently bad no matter how many people try to defend it or justify it. It’s not even just about how well you’re controlling your car (although that is extremely important) it’s that you’re not really paying attention to what other people on the road are doing, and you’re too focused on your text to react appropriately.
So maybe it’s starting to get through to people that texting and driving really isn’t that smart, but then you have another culprit to tackle that not many people mention: social media.
In a way it almost seems as if social media is an even bigger danger because it really is “that quick” to check the notification. “Annie May liked your photo on Instagram.” “Johnathan Webber liked your post on Facebook.” But it has the same possible effect as texting does; it only takes one glance for a lot of people’s days – even lives – to be ruined.
Recently AT&T tackled this subject as well with a new video from their “It Can Wait” campaign that extends beyond texting and driving. In short, the video shows that just glancing down at one tiny thing can easily distract you from one life-changing moment. Although the commercial is obviously dramatized and not real, there is a very real documentary on the web titled “From One Second To The Next” by Werner Herzog that shows four accounts of people who have actually been drastically affected by texting and driving.
It just baffles me how anybody looks at this as a non-issue. I’m willing to bet that on most occasions where you have some driver cut you off or do otherwise questionable actions on the road, and you throw your hand in the air and shout obscenities because you were nearly pummeled by another vehicle, was because they were paying attention to their phone. It’s a nasty habit that we can’t seem to break, but it needs to break. It isn’t about you or how good you are at driving – it’s about everybody else who have no reason to be put at risk for such a silly thing.
Texting and driving, social media and driving, or anything that requires physically looking at your phone and taking your eyes off of the road and driving are all inexcusable actions that need to stop. Nobody is the exception when it’s literally a life and death risk.