Being a responsible, well-respected adult will not keep a man from drinking and driving. Blasting music on the ride home from a biking event will not keep a teen awake while driving. Being a part of Gen-Z, and perfecting the one-handed text, does not mean young adults can use their phones while driving. All three of these subjects cause drivers to be impaired, meaning they all hinder the driver’s ability to pay attention to the road.

When the term “impaired driving” is mentioned in my community, there is one story that comes to mind for everyone: the teacher. A teacher at my high school was very well liked because of his engaging classes and entertaining humor–until the story broke out about his charge for driving under the influence of alcohol. Managing to be on the wrong side of the highway, and causing a head-on collision with a pregnant woman, definitely damaged his reputation. Now, us students are a little skeptical of the man we once favored. How could he have been so foolish to not just get a ride home, or stay the night somewhere? The news headline was a wake-up call for me and my peers to not drink and drive. Even though most of us avoid being like our teacher, alcohol is not the only thing that restricts people’s abilities to drive.

You can not control the wheel if you are not awake to do it. Sounds simple, but on late-night drives home from tiring events, it is very easy to fall asleep on the road. A dear friend of mine is an extremely talented mountain-biker, so he frequently travels upstate to participate in derbies. Since the larger mountains in our state are a long ways away, he is typically still driving home when the sun sinks below the trees. After one particularly exhausting day, he fell asleep on the road, twice. The first time, he swerved into the opposite lane, and awoke abruptly to a blaring car horn and bright headlights shining through the windshield. He immediately yanked the wheel to get back into the right lane, and avoided hitting the other car. The second time, there was no one else on the road to wake him up. When he opened his eyes, he was off the road, lodged perfectly between two trees. If he had driven off a few feet to the right or left, he may not have escaped unscathed. It is important to rest before driving, because clearly loud music and caffeine is not enough to prevent intense fatigue.

Something that has been normalized among young people is texting and driving. I would say it is the most common driving impairment in modern day. All my friends know not to do it, because I nag them relentlessly about it, but most teens still do not know why it is so bad. To educate us on the dangers of texting and driving, my physics teacher had us do a lab to test our reaction time. On the first round of the experiment, my group members and I took turns catching a ruler. We had our hands start at zero centimeters, and caught it as fast as we could once the other person dropped it. We took note of what centimeter mark we caught the ruler at, and then ran the experiment again, this time while using our other hand to send a text. We used the equation 2xa=t to figure out our reaction time. The variable x stands for the distance the ruler traveled in meters, a stands for the acceleration of gravity (how fast the ruler fell), which is 9.8 m/s2, and t is how many seconds it took us to react to the dropping ruler. When we plugged in the average centimeter mark we caught the ruler at during the first round of the experiment, we found that our normal reaction time was 0.15 seconds. When we plugged in the averages from the texting round, our reaction time doubled to 0.30 seconds. 

After finding our reaction times, we used another equation, x=12(v0+v)t, to find how far our car would travel before we hit the brakes if we were going fifty miles per hour, in both scenarios. The variable x stands for the distance the car would travel in meters, v0 stands for our initial velocity in meters per second, v stands for our final velocity, and t stands for our reaction time in seconds. For our regular reaction time, the equation was x=12(22.4+0)0.15. If we are paying attention to the road, the car would only travel 1.68 meters before we hit the brakes. Unsurprisingly, when we plugged in our texting reaction time, x=12(22.4+0)0.30 , the distance traveled doubled to 3.36 meters. This experiment gave us a valid, scientifically-proven reason not to text and drive. Not paying attention to the road slows reaction time, increasing the chance of car damage, injury, or even death.

The only way to entirely prevent impaired driving is to get rid of all motor vehicles, but that is obviously unreasonable. Vehicles are a privilege available to the public in modern day, so the public needs to learn how to handle them responsibly. The average American receives a drivers license in their teen years, and (unless they make a career out of driving) do not receive further education for the rest of their life. This could be a central cause of the impaired driving epidemic that is happening in the United States. People are shown statistics about impaired driving, but numbers are easily forgettable. Real stories, though, are memorable. Real stories from a survivor of a crash caused by impaired driving. Real stories of the grief held by a person whose loved one died because of a drunk driver. Spitting numbers at kids and adults will not educate them, invoking emotion will. When a driver grabs their phone, they will not remember numbers, but they will remember a crying mother, one whose son passed away because another driver was not paying attention to the road.

I can do my best to inform my friends of these dangers, and tell my loved ones to drive safely, but I can not stop this epidemic all by myself. It is essential for driver’s education schools to continuously teach their students, not just fulfill the required in-class and on-the-road hours before letting them go forever. Gentle reminders to rest before travelling long distances, or to Uber home when tipsy, could save the lives of thousands.