Growing up driving on backroads and being forced upon Highway 2 for any and all connection with civilization, impaired driving has taken on different meanings as I’ve grown older. When I was younger, impaired driving was the taboo remark that I heard adults whisper about from their weekend activities. A topic hidden within their trips to and from bars. Impaired driving had been the hushed word of what nearly took my brother on his way home from a friend's house at 16, and the cause of the resulting DUI that followed. It was a scary word, it was big, and it seemed a little... impossible for me. I never really understood what it truly meant back then. My understanding was that if you’re drinking, then don’t drive. It was as simple as that. I didn’t know how wrong my understanding and understatement of the phrase was, how big the problem truly is.

When I had gotten a little older, the term impaired driving presented itself in new ways. At 15, when I was just learning to drive, I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to focus with the radio blaring so loud. When my parents were driving, we would set the radio to 105.7 FM and speed around the twists and turns of the corners on our dirt roads. When I had just got my permit, and with everything being so new to me, it was hard to focus on the road and its dangers when the lyrics to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” were filling the air and screaming in my face. I found myself forgetting which way the blinkers went and not remembering to put my parking brake on. My dad noticed this and turned off the radio, saying I would “be able to handle it when I’m a little older.” I play the radio on my way to work and school everyday, and sometimes it feels the same as it did back then. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever truly grow out of it. Multitasking can be a very dangerous game to play when controlling a hunk of metal hurling itself down the road at 60 miles per hour.

Now that I am 17, and all of my friends and I have driver's licenses, I have made note of more contemporary ways that drivers become impaired. On trips to the mall, I’ve seen my friends be stressed over looking at the Google Maps app on their phones, despite the app being hands-free when connected to bluetooth. I’ve watched drivers drive nearly 15 miles under the speed limit because they are fiddling with their Smart Watch on the way to work. I’ve seen cars attempt to pass me on the Highway, despite me going 5 miles over the posted speed limit. I slowly drive past the aftermath of head-on collisions donning Highway 2 at least once a month on the way to my school. The misconception of today’s impaired drivers is that the only way to become impaired while driving is to drink or take medication before driving. Most crashes that happen around me aren’t the result of substance use or abuse, it’s often the result of distraction. 

Drivers become distracted by their phones, radio, watches, books, the sun, other cars... everything. It’s even harder nowadays with all of the shiny new buttons and knobs in current cars. This problem is something not widely talked about in society or Drivers Education, and it’s something that new drivers don’t really know to watch out for. I consider my father to be a master driver. He has a Commercial Driver’s License, is a champion race car driver in several classes, and is the Equipment Tech Supervisor at his job. Never once did my dad tell me how easy it is for our brains to get overloaded with input. This conclusion is something I’ve had to develop on my own over several years while evaluating my surroundings and trying to make sense of the signals going a billion different ways. Taking all of that into account, I believe that impaired driving means to dangerously drive while being distracted by either a substance, technology, or unimportant/insignificant factors around the road. I’ve always considered myself lucky to have a simple, modest, old car that doesn’t really have much to distract me with on the road. Impaired driving is something that happens to everyone, of any age, almost every day. Impaired driving doesn’t choose its users, but drivers choose to drive distracted.