By Amy Van Veen (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 10, 2012
Distracted driving: what does it mean exactly? The first thing that pops into everyone’s heads has to be cell phone use. Signs, commercials and annoying friends constantly nag you not to use your phone and drive, and it makes sense, until you feel the dire need to text your friend and ask if they want a coffee.
There are other ways to be distracted while driving, though.
Take, for example, the person I saw driving behind me on my way to school. It was in Aldergrove at the light just before merging onto Highway 1. I looked in my rear-view mirror to see a girl wearing her iPod earbuds while towel-drying her hair.
There doesn’t seem to be any specific legislation regarding the use of headphones—like there is the use of anything handheld—while driving, but it is an increased danger to both yourself and other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Just like listening to your stereo at its maximum volume—which is not only irresponsible, but annoying to all those within a 10 metre radius of your vehicle—it limits what you’re able to hear, like sirens, horns, car brakes, screeching tires and people yelling at you because you’re not paying attention.
As a young and stupid driver, I do remember times when my stereo was a little too loud and about 90 per cent of the time it didn’t matter. But I do remember those moments when I ignored the suggestion to check your mirrors every five to eight seconds with my radio on a little louder because Taylor Swift just understood me, but then when I finally checked my mirror and saw an ambulance with its flashing lights and blaring siren right behind me, my heart rate jumped up and I pulled over to the side of the road, shamefully red-faced and a little shaky. How long had they been waiting for me to pull over? Whose life did I just put in danger because I couldn’t get out of the way for the paramedics to do their job?
Headphones, it stands to reason, make that situation that much worse. At least with the stereo, your ears are still open to other sounds, but with headphones, your ears are that much more blocked. Unlike a pedestrian wearing his earbuds and not noticing there’s a train coming (that happens more often than we’d like to think), a driver in charge of over a ton of steel becomes the threat to others, not the single victim.
Again, too-loud music is a little obvious, just like taking your hands off the wheel to text your friend a smiley face. It’s the perhaps less obvious, but just as ridiculous, driving habits that can put yourself and others at risk. Towel-drying your hair, for example. Or touching up make-up because you slept in. Juggling that large, morning double-double with a breakfast sandwich also makes your response time that much slower because the coffee and sandwich need to be put down before full control of the steering wheel can be taken back. Once again, I recall a time when the slippery wet roads combined with my coffee in hand meant a, thankfully, inconsequential rear-ender that resulted in hot coffee all the way down my leg.
Similar to the towel-drying I witnessed by a young driver, I remember a time when I changed my whole outfit while driving down Fraser Highway. Unsafe? Yes. Stupid? Absolutely. A youth thinking she was invincible because she had yet to actually be in an accident? Unfortunately true.
I know I always used to think I was the exception and it’s only the really bad drivers that got into accidents, but the thing about an accident is that it’s accidental – no one plans it, no one knows when it’s going to happen, but it happens. And the best way to avoid its sometimes fatal consequences is to remember that you’re the rule, not the exception.
