en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:58:54 GMT 15 By Emma Zaballos
Around here, turning sixteen and finally getting a drivers’ license has been a milestone in any teenager’s life for as long as anyone can remember. At Whitewater High School, it is dangled over the heads of apathetic freshmen as incentive to advance to sophomore status: with the status comes the ability to enroll in drivers’ education classes. In rural towns like ours, getting a drivers’ license gives students who live far away from school independence from their parents’ schedules and a new ability to participate in extra-curricular activities. It’s an independence that most students would die for. Another essential to any teen’s life is the ubiquitous cell phone. From the humble flip phone to the coveted iPhone or Blackberry, most WHS students can’t live without their cell phones. In fact, cells phones are some of the most stolen items at Whitewater High School, and certainly the ones most often confiscated. As evidenced by the beeping sound of sent messages filling the halls during passing periods, most students can’t be without their cell phones for very long. In the words of Austin Holik, sophomore, “You can’t live without a cell phone.” Even teachers use (or abuse) them: social studies teacher Mr. Greg Stewart turned his cell phone in to the office when it went off during a class he was teaching. While cell phone use may be pervasive, students’ inability to put down their cell phones isn’t necessarily harmless. According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of teens text, and 54% text daily. It is also the most frequent mode of communication we use, even more than talking face to face! One third of the students at this school send more than 100 texts a day. Texting has revolutionized communication for teenagers. However, the increased reliance on cell phones and texting as forms of communication has resulted in a serious problem: texting while driving. People think they can multi-task. How many students have tried to work on something else during class? Unfortunately, the fact is that people can’t multi-task effectively, especially during a demanding task such as driving. A study led by Professor Dave Strayer of University of Utah concluded that when a teenager is driving using a cell phone—not even texting, just using a cell phone—he or she has the reaction time of a seventy year old. This is even more shocking when you consider that physically, teens are in the prime of their lives. Simply using a cell phone when driving takes a teen from the best reaction times he or she will ever enjoy to the reaction times of a person that for the majority of human history was literally impossibly old. It gets even more dramatic: according to a recent study, when you text you become eight times more likely to get into an accident. This is similar to the effect of drinking four beers. If you don’t drive drunk (and that’s another conversation), you shouldn’t text and drive either. In Wisconsin driving while distracted is even riskier than in many other states. Texting while driving has been illegal since December 2010: getting caught could cost a driver up to $400 and four demerits. In a more immediate and literal sense, it’s courting disaster. In more temperate states, a driver generally just has to worry about small animals, other drivers, and inanimate objects (like trees). But in wintry, wildlife-filled Wisconsin, the state DNR receives reports of approximately 22,000 collisions of cars with deer every year; the five seconds a driver is looking at their cell phone could be the five seconds when the deer jumps in front of the car. If the car is traveling at 55 miles per hour, then during those five seconds you’ve traveled the length of a football field, more or less blind. Not to mention that, from late November to March, a mix of hail, ice, snow, sleet, and black ice often covers the roads. Isn’t driving hard enough already? A charity based in the United Kingdom, Living Streets, conducted a survey and discovered that in Great Britain alone 6.5 million people have been injured while texting and walking. Not driving, just walking. Consider this: if people are so distracted when they text that they get injured while they were walking, why on earth would they be behind the wheel of several thousand pounds of moving metal? As Wisconsin State Patrol Superintendent David Collins stated, “...driving requires your undivided attention. Any lapse in attention to traffic or road conditions is a grave danger to you, your passengers and everyone else on the road. No attempt to multi-task in your vehicle, no phone call, and no text message is more important than a human life.” Not only is texting while driving illegal, dangerous, potentially expensive, and disrespectful to other drivers, it’s just plain stupid. ]]> Thu, 24 Feb 2011 23:57:23 GMT