When I hear the phrase “impaired driving,” I don’t have the textbook definition paired with it. I think of anything that distracts or dulls a person’s ability to control a vehicle and protect the people around them. It doesn’t always look dramatic. It won’t always be someone stumbling to the driver’s side or slurring while looking for their keys. Most of the time, impairment is subtle. It is just enough to shift your attention from the road to the wrong place for one second too long. Sadly, that second can be all it takes.

People misunderstand this, even drivers who have been through driver’s education or passed their license test. They learn rules and tips, but they don’t learn themselves. They don’t learn how their own stress and exhaustion can show up behind the wheel. We imagine red eyes, spilled drinks, and loud voices. We don’t picture a straight-A student crying after an exam and driving on autopilot, or a tired dad coming home from a night shift, blinking harder because the lights blur. We don’t picture these people because they don’t “look impaired.” No one realizes that impairment isn’t about appearance. It’s about capacity.

The most common kinds of impairment today aren’t even the ones people warn us about. Fatigue is probably at the top of the list with texting and weed usage trailing behind. I don’t think people realize how dangerous fatigue is until they experience that moment where your brain just… shuts down. College students will drive six hours home after a concert because they can’t pay for a hotel and a ticket. Working parents fight to stay awake at the wheel because the kids need to be at school the next morning. Nobody calls it impairment, but that is definitely the word. Your judgment slows and your reaction time multiplies. Worst of all, you can fall asleep for a few seconds and not know you did. Those seconds are enough to cross a center line or miss the object in the road. 

Then there’s texting. People act like replying “I am driving. Give me 5 minutes.” or finding a new song isn’t dangerous. They don’t think about the mental switch that happens the moment you glance at a screen. The road stops being the center of your attention. A message becomes the center instead. We even have hands-free systems like Apple CarPlay built in and yet people still reach down to grab their phone out of habit. 

Marijuana use is an ambiguous one on this list only because there is not as much data surrounding it. Make no mistake though, this has become a bigger issue. Not necessarily because people want to be reckless, but because they don’t feel drunk. They don’t feel clumsy or impulsive. They feel relaxed. They convince themselves that “it’s just weed” because everyone around them treats it like it’s harmless. No one realizes that THC, and the false sense of security that it gives you, can be more dangerous than anything else. THC doesn’t make you loud, instead it makes you slow. It changes how your brain relieves speed, distance, and time. I’ve heard so many people say they “drive better high.” No one who actually understands traffic safety has ever agreed with them.

My view on impaired driving comes from a story I grew up hearing, not a lesson in a classroom. My mom’s cousin drove a car full of friends to their graduation party. They’d made it through high school and survived finals, college decisions, all the pain that comes with being a teenager. On the way home, a drunk driver hit them head-on. Everyone in the car except one person died. The survivor still has panic attacks when they’re on a long stretch of highway. They can’t drive. They sit in the passenger seat gripping the door handle like it might disappear.

You hear the statistics all the time. The 1 in 5, 1 in 10, “thousands of preventable deaths every year,” but they never feel real until the grief stares you in the face. I didn’t touch alcohol until I turned 21. Even now, I won’t drive after a sip. Not because I think I’d be falling over drunk, but because I know it wouldn’t take reaching that level to ruin someone’s life. “I can drive” and “I can safely drive” are not the same thing.

Driver’s education can absolutely change how people think about impaired driving, but only if we stop treating it like a box you check off at the DMV. In Tennessee, all I had to do was study the handbook, take the written test, and pass the road exam. That was it. No deeper conversation about fatigue. No real discussion of trauma or responsibility. Just rules and memorization. In Georgia, young drivers have to complete actual driver training and learn something called Joshua’s Law. They’re confronted with what crashes look like in real life, not just on a cartoon diagram. They learn that it isn’t just about steering the car but it’s about understanding that you’re controlling a 4,000-pound machine that could kill someone.

That’s where education becomes meaningful. Not when it’s theoretical, but when it becomes emotional. When a student can connect a rule to a consequence. When “don’t drink and drive” isn’t just a slogan, but is connected to four eighteen year olds that were the consequence of someone who did.

My responsibility is pretty simple. I speak up. I offer to be the designated driver. I call people out gently when I see them reach for their phone. When my friends joke about “just pushing through the sleepiness,” I tell them what I know. I’d rather be dramatic and hear about it tomorrow than silent at a funeral.

Impaired driving is preventable. It doesn’t require genius or technology or luck. It requires admitting that you are unable to perform a task. The moment you say, “I’m not at my best right now, and someone else should take the wheel,” you have made the road safer. If more of us learned to say that, a lot more people would make it home.