Texting and driving: Not as easy as you think

Last week, I participated in a texting and driving assignment for class that was hosted by the CSUF Police Department. I am no stranger to responding to texts from others while driving, so I thought I could maneuver the obstacle course better than my classmates.

We drove an electric golf cart style vehicle through a tight lane marked by traffic cones. The makeshift course had two sharp turns and two community service officers throwing a basketball back and forth.

I sat in the driver’s seat. Officer K. Remigio sat next to me, with two students in the backseat. I was instructed to send a simple text: “Let’s go see ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’”

Easy, right?

Nope.

As I sat behind the wheel, I was confident. But when I hit the accelerator and looked down at my phone, it was evident that my confidence would be quickly shattered.

Looking at my phone was distracting enough. However, the officer would yell at me to drive faster, play music, change the song, and much more. It was extremely overstimulating, which is not what you want to feel behind the wheel.

I hit several traffic cones, which we were told to believe were children going to Disneyland. It’s difficult knowing I prevented many children from going to the happiest place on earth.

I sent my text with no errors, but I still feel that I performed poorly. Even after my second attempt, I performed pretty much the same.

But I was not even the worst of it. Some of the other students ran over cones, sometimes stalling on top of them. Others had to do two to three point reverses to clear the course. It was really alarming to see.

I tried a third time, where I did not use my phone at all. Unsurprisingly, it was significantly easier. I cleared the course without committing a hit-and-run on a Disney bound child. 

It’s easy to think we are performing at an amazing level when we cannot physically see ourselves from a third person point of view. Seeing myself and other people hit cones made me wonder how Highway 91 would look if we had cones instead of lane markers.

If we performed this poorly in front of police officers, it is a terrifying mystery as to how people perform when they are not being watched by officers.

People do not perform that well on the actual roads. According to the California Office of Traffic Safety, even engaging with a cellular device in any way raises the crash risk by about three times.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports painfully similar numbers, specifically regarding teenagers and distracted driving. They report that 8% of distracted driver crashes involved a teenager behind the wheel.

The threat is very real, and the most susceptible to these are young people. The fact that I performed poorly compared to what I had expected made me think of all the young people on the road.

The numbers are alarming. Yet, people seem to have this overconfidence while driving. I am guilty of that overconfidence. Prior to the activity I thought I was untouchable.

But now I realize I am not.

After reflecting, it was arrogant of me to believe that I was invincible. Just because I had not been in an accident due to my driving does not mean I am some untouchable Clark Kent. After reading the statistics on the harm caused by distracted driving, it feels selfish that I was okay risking not just my life, but lives around me as well.

I was disheartened to see my classmates struggle to drive through the lane of cones. Maybe these students will cease the bad habit of texting while driving. Maybe they will tell their friends. One less distracted driver makes our roads just that much safer.

Some students were already practicing safe driving skills. Voice assistants have been helping reduce distracted driving, said Ariana Hartman, a 20-year-old classmate.

However, other students were not necessarily aware as to how difficult the assignment would be, and how dangerous texting and driving really is.

“People were running over cones and going super fast,” Hartman said. “If we were actually on the road, I cannot even imagine how dangerous it would be.”

The assessment was an overall exciting event, but was clouded with the somber reality of the danger of texting and driving. The rude awakening of the poor performance, mixed with the harsh reality of the statistics I found after driving, created a really strong belief in me to not text and drive again.