You whip out your phone real quick, hoping to check the text you just felt ding in your pocket. Or maybe you switch on some music, scrolling through your playlists to find the right mood. Maybe you yawn, still feeling the effects of last night’s late study session before your big test today. Regardless of the choice, the outcome is the same: you take your eyes off the road, even if just for a little while. Your attention slips, momentarily focused on something other than commandeering your giant box of metal hurtling down the freeway. You look up from your trivial task just in time to see a fellow metal monster barreling towards you, lights flashing and horn blaring. You attempt to slam on the brakes, but it’s too late. Your automobiles collide, metal crunching, glass flying like shrapnel, seatbelts digging into skin. You glance over the wheel into the eyes of the person only a dashboard away, the terror in their face reflecting your own, before your airbag inflates, blocking your field of view.

This incident occurs more than a thousand times each day, seriously injuring hundreds of civilians and proving fatal to several more. Accidents such as these illustrate the all-too-common adverse effects of impaired driving, yet such dangers are often overlooked, generalized into a single definition and disregarded as some extreme scenario that couldn’t possibly play out.

For far too many people in modern society, myself once included, “sober driving” has come to mean “safe driving.” Being “distracted” while driving has been equated to being “drunk,” fueled by consistent warnings against this single practice in particular. People have become so used to scoldings about driving while drunk that it has been molded into the exclusive danger on the road, overshadowing other, much more prevalent threats. But an impaired driver can be so much more than one under the influence. They could be a texter. They could be a talker. They could be a DJ browsing song titles, a worn-out student a few hours short of a good night’s rest, or a munchy middle-aged man looking to enjoy breakfast on the way to work. Impaired driving truly refers to any form of distraction while in the driver’s seat, any activity diverting your attention from the task at hand. 

Despite the intense cultural emphasis placed on drunk driving, phone usage is probably the most common type of impairment among drivers in current generations. What seems to be an innocuous little check of the device buzzing in your pocket in reality takes one’s eyes off the road for an extended period of time, producing a very real threat. The apparent speed of such an action makes it particularly appealing–after all, the reel your friend sent couldn’t be more than thirty seconds or so, right? Such a facade of harmlessness encourages more people to partake, underscoring the true danger our metal pocket machines hold.

I can still remember the peculiar day in my high school career that began my revelation as to the inherent, all-too-real dangers of impaired driving in any form. It began with a beep. Over the loudspeakers, every 15 minutes or so. It was the sound of a pulse flatlining, meant to emphasize the number of alcohol-related car accident fatalities that occur every hour. This demonstration was part of the Shattered Dreams simulation, a school-based program that aims to reduce impaired driving by staging realistic alcohol-related car crashes for students. The acting came later, but it was the initial, simple noise that particularly awakened me to the dangers of impaired driving. The fact that every beep was an actual human life lost was baffling, truly illustrating the hazards the seemingly simple, everyday act of driving could actually cause if not taken seriously. This realization has only been strengthened with time as more personal experiences have risen up. People I’ve spent years with, friends I had developed a faith in based upon their dependability and caution on the road, still experienced harrowing car crashes influenced in some way by distracted driving, unveiling the fact that these reckless crashes can happen to quite literally anyone. 

With the influences of technology ever-expanding in the modern world, impaired driving has come to have major implications in contemporary society, placing responsibility for preventing such distractions upon each and every member. Driver’s education and traffic school courses play a pivotal role in such prevention, instructing generations that will become the drivers of the future. Although steps have most definitely been taken in the right direction, there is always room for further caution in the field of impaired driving. These programs could employ methods such as immersive experiences and personal stories in their courses, introducing the future drivers to actual crash footage and victim testimonies to make the threat feel more real. Measures could also be taken to place further emphasis upon phone usage and fatigue during driving, making efforts to label these activities as forms of impairment presenting risks equal to that of driving under the influence. Such balanced attention and realism could substantially assist these drivers-to-be, giving them personalized accounts as to the potential dangers of impaired driving to help them stop the practice before the practice stops them–in a much more violent way than they’d like. 

However, the true cornerstone for impaired driving awareness begins with personal advocacy. Every citizen in every country has a role to play, utilizing their own knowledge of the threats presented by distracted driving to prevent such dangers from crashing down on them. Passengers across the globe, myself included, can rally against phone usage while on the road, perhaps volunteering to control music or respond to texts and calls to help keep the driver’s attention focused upon the task at hand. Every little step counts, and every individual can be an influence, helping keep people’s eyes on the road ahead.