For anyone who thinks texting and driving is no big deal
 

This was my night last night:

Tonight I arrived on the scene of an accident. I held a young girl's hand while she layed bleeding from her head and face as I waited for help to arrive.
She had run the red light in her Kia and got T-Boned by an SUV. She asked me if her face was okay. I told her she was going to be fine. She couldn't open her one eye and the blood was dripping into her mouth. I don't know if I convinced her.
She told me it was her birthday and she was going to meet her friends.
She wanted me to call her parents. I asked her where her phone was. She cried "It's down by my legs. I dropped it. I was texting. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Tragic.

:shakes head: What happened to the people in the SUV? I feel sorry for the young lady but it was her own stupidity that caused the accident. I just hope she has enough insurance to pay for the SUV occupants' medical and repair bills.

:iagree:

I rid myself of the desire to text by simply turning that feature off when I am driving. A simple app turns off texting beeps at 20mph. Easy enough!

Holy crap!

This is a good lesson. Thanks for sharing. When I see a driver texting I just stay away from them. I always looke behind me to see if they are paying attention or looking down. Hope people come out alive from that accident.

Yooooo peeps taking the text and drive seriosuly one lady even pulled over on a street and started texting. Then continued driving. :icon17:

:iagree:

This is just sad..

Call me an ******* but too bad she didn't die.

If every youthful indiscretion resulted in a fatality then we'd have been a short lived species. We can feel for everyone involved, hope for the best, and still hold the guilty culpable for his or her own actions. Wishing someone had died doesn't make you tough on the guilty, it just seems to diminish your humanity a bit.

You are not an azzhole, you are a douche. Genuinely.

Thanks!

Your entitled to your opinion, But as a Father I wouldn't wish that on anyone's daughter for a simple careless mistake.
I totally agree.

She could have killed someone because she obviously thought texting her friends was more important than paying attention to the road. To me thats a little more than "youthful indiscretion" as you call it. It selfishness and carelessness that could have been prevented by putting the damn phone down.

You're making assumptions that are convenient to your position. Maybe your assumption is correct that she thought texting was more important than paying attention to the road, but I doubt it. More likely (I think) is that in her youthfulness and inexperience, she thought she could she could do both - text her friends while giving sufficient attention to the road. People do this sort of thing all the time - we over estimate our abilities and this is so very common when it comes to the number of things we THINK we can pay attention to simultaneously. The scientific literature in the matter is amazing; how little we can really juggle but how well we think we are doing it.

So, maybe you are right, but you might leave a little room for other possibilities - maybe including possibilities that don't make it so easy to be so cold to human tragedy Also, understanding the reality of what happened is what allows us to look for solution. A false characterization of what happened and WHY can only lead to false solutions - not helpful to anyone, including future victims of people texting while driving. Do you want only to throw stones, or do you want to help prevent these sorts of accidents?

Glad no fatalities, hope lesson is learned.

How can you doubt it? It happened. She said she was texting. She blew the light and hit someone.

It doesn't take scientific literature to know that its a stupid thing to do. Many states have made it illegal because of what can happen when people are distracted like that. To me it falls in the same category as drunk driving. People obviously think they can handle it.

The only tragedy here is the people that got hit and could have been killed. I'm sorry if I don't feel any remorse for stupidity and selfishness.
She asked if her face was ok.. That tells me she's more interested in herself and her looks than causing harm to other drivers on the road.

While I doubt a meaningless conversion on a forum would contribute to any type of solution for this issue, the solution seems pretty simple to me, don't text and drive..

If the scenario were like this instead.. She was driving the SUV and plowed into a little Kia and killed a bunch of kids.. Would you still chalk it up youthful indiscretion then?

It is easy to judge when you aren't involved. Yes, the driver was texting and driving. Did the driver judge the risk and how they would impact herself and others, no. The fact is that this thought process doesn't become first nature until a human progresses so far in life (experience, not age). Does she deserved to be punished, yes she needs to be punished and learn or it will occur again.

For those who haven't had to deal with death or near death, it changes everything. Your perspective on life will change/ your mind will open. The world doesn't give a **** about you but did you do your part it making it better? Hopefully, all the victims from the crash will take away a positive, whether it is not to take life for granted or simply don't text and drive. Everything matters, everyone matters. Make a difference.

Jeezus Christ... That makes me feel terrible

:(

I talk on my phone while driving. But I never text while driving......unless I'm at a full stop:tup: Hopefully she learned her lesson. Glad there were no fatalities?:ugh2:

Bingo. I hope everyone involved fully recovers from this tragedy.

Why are you people making excuses for the girl? She screwed up. Bad. When was the last time Mother Nature gave a damn about "youthful indiscretion"? The gal is lucky that dear old Mom didn't kill her.

If you engage in risky behavior, you sometimes get hurt. Sometimes you die. Whether that's fair or not doesn't really matter - that's just the way it is.

:iagree: :(

Noo, not at all. An EXPLANATION and excuse are VERY different. She is still RESPONSIBLE for her actions and shoulders the blame completely and that has never been in question here. She is both legally and morally responsible to those that she has harmed.

The distinction here is that humans are fallible; teens especially so. Our ability to fully understand risk, to mange risk, and understand our own capabilities changes with experience and age. Saying that it is unfortunate that the guilty party didn't die just seems harsh. At a minimum, how can one be held responsible and make restitution if absent from the planet.

It gets to a problem we have in society and that is that we use self righteous indignation as a substitute for a fuller understanding of the complexities of an issue. One can say that they recognize the sort of behavior in question as all too common; not wish dear upon the actor; hold them fully accountable; and in no way harbor any willingness to EXCUSE the behavior or vitiate the perpetrator of responsibility.

The notion that my words or the words of others here are meant to, or can rightly be taken as something that EXCUSES (in the proper meaning of the word) the girl is a gross misreading of the literal meaning of the written words and the intent of the author(s). The question of what should happen to the guilty party really hasn't been the subject of discussion except to say wishing a young driver death for what lots (wayyyy too many) people) do is questionable; the culpability of the guilty party has NEVER been questioned (certainly not by me).

Perhaps we are both reading too much into each others comments. I am not trying to say that she should have died nor do I agree with the member that stated so.

Mother Nature doesn't care if you call it a reason or an excuse. Mother Nature doesn't care. Period. If you screw up bad enough, no matter what your intentions, you get hurt/killed.

In the end, the girl knowingly endangered herself and others. The reason/excuse is moot. We reap what we sow.

Wheeeeeee. :roflpuke2:

Honestly if that **** isnt important dont text and drive u can only get a few letters in anyways. :rofl2:

While she did make a mistake that could have been, and almost was fatal, wishing she died from it is incredibly disgusting. I don't know you and I don't know if you have kids, but what if that was your son or daughter making the mistake? Would you wish the same for them? I really don't think I can say it any better than H2O Doc did, so I won't try to, but that was an absolutely detestable thing to say.

I just hope she learned her lesson and she can push her friends to be more responsible as well. Can't learn if mistakes aren't made. And one way to learn is through people close to you that have been hurt. So maybe this small tragedy can somehow convince the next person to not kill someone that they might have if this had not happened. If no one died then it should be just that. A lesson. We can all learn from this even if we don't text and drive.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

The shame of it all is that it does take something like this to happen to people personally, or to a loved one/someone close to them for it to hit home.
All day long on the roads I look in my mirror or at the person next to me and they have their fuqqing phone in their hands and/or their head is tilted down looking at the screen, not the road in front of them.
People just don't get it and that makes me sad and angry.

+1

This happens with almost every sort of risk assessment people do. We get scared about things like flying on an airplane or a tornado gouging our house; things that rarely happen. But we have utterly backwards assessments of things that happen at a high frequency, like driving mistakes of any sort. It's sad.

I personally only text when I'm at a full stop at a fresh green light, and only after clearing the area of things I should care about (flashing lights, peds...). I never talk on the phone while I drive. Too often when I have done that, it scares me that I don't actually recall the last x blocks of driving. We *think* we can multitask...until that one time we fuq it up and realization charges a huge cost for the lesson. It pisses me off as well that I can literally count on 25% of drivers to be on their phone while they drive. And I get sad when I see they have full child seats in the back as they talk it while speeding up to squeeze into the intersection on a stale yellow with no signal of their own since their hands are busy.

(I deal with this in security as well. Few people take security seriously, whether it's a business dealing with information security or a homeowner who keeps putting off the home alarm system. It suddenly becomes essential *after* an incident or after someone very near to them suffers it. We have terrible risk assessing skills, and poor ability to envision 2 steps ahead. We need better thinking skills in people and to pass on the bad lessons. The only driver's ed class I remember was the sim where the sim cheated and put us into a situation that would have resulted in an accident had it been running at full speed. Businesses get penetation tests for reasons beyond just testing, but to roleplay the reality of an incident...)

(And most of my life's pet peeves are centered around people's driving habits. I drive like I wish everyone drove.)