Last night our son took us out for a drive in his new ride. We figured, since it was his first time on the road that we would just let him drive around the neighborhood. We hadn’t gotten too far, when we realized the reason for his crazy driving was because he was texting while driving. Where did he learn this from?
I must admit, texting while driving had been a major issue for me for years. One time, I was driving up my parents street (texting a friend that I was on my way) when I realized I had ran over the curb and almost ran into the stop sign. It’s not like I wasn’t paying attention for that long, but it was long enough that I could have caused my car, myself, and possibly others some serious damage.
Another time I was driving down a main road, heading to the gym, and I received a text from someone. I looked down quickly to see who was texting me and the next thing you know I side swiped a garbage can on the side of the road. What in the world? It was at that moment that I decided that texting and driving wasn’t going to be for me.
I can’t tell you how many times I have been walking around the neighborhoods and almost been hit by people texting while driving. I think, what if that wouldn’t have been a garbage can that I hit and it would have been a parent walking their child in a stroller?
We have become slaves to our phones and when we hear that “Ding!” for some reason we instantly look down and have to check our phones to see the important information that someone HAD to send us via text message. I am pretty sure that a text message can wait and if you have children in the car with you then you really have more important things to be paying attention to in your car.
When I receive a text while I am driving and my family is in the car with me I always hand my phone over to my wife or she just picks it up and reads the text out loud to me. I’m not going to lie, she has read some amazingly awkward text messages that require long backstories to bring her up to date. But rather have an awkward text read out loud than my rights read out loud by the cop pulling me over. Okay, I won’t get arrested for texting, but since I’m not a fan of cops I am sure I would run my mouth and get in trouble to the point that they would just arrest me.
I ask that we think about what we are doing and not set a bad example to our children. The texts can wait and if there is anything you should be paying attention to it should be your family.
