April is Distracted Driver Awareness Month. It could be called ‘Pay attention, you’re driving a giant chunk of metal!’ month.
Most people that have a cell phone have done it. You’re driving down the road and your phone notifies you of an incoming text, email or call. You know you shouldn’t respond but you do. I’ve done it. I think I have all my attention on the road. C’mon, I’ve been driving for years! I can multitask. I can handle glancing down at my phone and watching the road.
But science and statistics prove we can’t. In my perusing of the vast knowledge base that is Google, one study actually said that the better you think you are at multitasking, the worse you probably are at it. And no, you aren’t the exception. If you are a teenager, you aren’t good at it either. Even though you’ve grown up with cell phones, etc. Your brain still isn’t capable of processing a text and driving at the same time. One of those things will get all of your attention and it’s probably not the road in front of you.
It seems that every day there is an accident blamed on a distracted driver. I don’t want it to be me. I don’t want to think that the last thing I do in my life is text, “I’m stopping to get cat food before we run out.”. My cats may think that it was worth it but my family wouldn’t.