This world is fast paced and busy. People rushing from one place to the next. Whether work, home, parties, school, sports, it is pretty much non-stop. We are a community built around doing and there is always traffic on the roads. Due to prices rising people are forced to work more and more to make ends meet. Long hours or multiple jobs or even just taxing jobs are common. Roads get especially backed up when people go to and from work. People who just had to deal with a day of customers, annoying coworkers and bosses, or inconvenient problems, are now all driving together with home on their minds more than the road is. With this being said I believe the type of driving impairment that is most common today is fatigue. I know that after a restless night or long day getting behind the wheel can feel exhausting, and exhaustion can cloud the mind. Personally, I hate driving when tired, it makes me nervous and causes me anxiety which in turn becomes another distraction. It is a known fact that when you are tired your ability to focus drops significantly. What makes this type of impairment even more dangerous is because it is hard to spot, stop, or control. It is natural to be tired and being fatigued is not an acceptable reason to be late to work or school. Unlike alcohol, texting, or drugs, though we can do things to try to stop fatigue, coffee, more sleep, cold showers ect… we ultimately can’t just say no to being sleepy like we can refuse a drink or drugs. Also lot’s of people, despite being exhausted, will drive anyway and that might not change even if people understood or were told about the unsafe environment driving while fatigued can cause. That brings me to the next impairment I feel I see far too often: texting. Texting is also one of the more common impairments, especially among the younger drivers. Even though we have been told since childhood how texting while driving can cause accidents, people still do it anyway. Although, it is less texting and more just phones and devices in general. Even just checking the phone at a red light or a stop sign is still a distraction. Or maybe someone got lost and is on their phone trying to find directions. Anything involving the use of a device while driving can be dangerous. Driving sometimes forces drivers to make split second decisions that could be the difference between life and death but yelling ‘Hey, Google!’ at your phone trying to get directions to the nearest gas station could keep a driver's focus from the road long enough for an accident to happen. Not everyone understands this, which is what makes it dangerous. People are often told not to text and drive but changing a song, talking on the phone, even hands free, or looking at directions can be just as much of a distraction if not more so. While being on the phone is generally more the problem, people really only talk about texting, leaving out a whole lot of other phone related distractions. If people are too focused on anything other than the road it can create a hazardous environment for other drivers, especially if more than one driver is distracted. While it can be controlled, usually through simple self-control, and there are laws against texting while driving, people tend to do it anyway. Probably thinking that sending a quick text message wouldn’t be a big deal. The apathy towards this impairment is what makes it dangerous. Overall, I believe that the two previously stated impairments of fatigue and texting while driving are the most common types of impairments. Fatigue is dangerous because it is a basic human function that can’t be controlled. The National Library of Medicine found through “Statistical analysis of braking reaction time has shown that the average reaction time for drivers without accidents was 0.377 s, and the average reaction time for drivers who had accidents was 0.393 s”(NLM) showing the difference in reaction time. Being even a few moments too slow can cause accidents which is incredibly dangerous. While drugs and alcohol are dangerous and do happen frequently according to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), texting and driving is more dangerous than driving under the influence, as on average “Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds”(NHTSA). They also said that when at a speed of 55mph, doing so is similar to “driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed.”(NHTSA) That study really puts into perspective how unsafe an environment texting while driving can create. Being aware of both of these impairments can help us combat the destruction they can cause and keep us from becoming part of the problem.