Texting and Driving…Please Don’t December 17, 2011

We hear it everyday, don’t text and drive, don’t text and drive, don’t text and drive. Eventually, it sounds like yada, yada, yada…we hear it so much that it just becomes noise at some point. The NTSB has recommended a ban on texting while driving and possibly even a ban on talking on the phone while driving even hands free. Here is why I think they may just be right.

My youngest child graduates from college today. It’s amazing in so many ways. I can not begin to tell you how proud I am of her. Not just because she is graduating, but because she managed to do it after she was in a car accident that left her with what most likely, at this point, is permanent trauma to her brain. She was hit by a someone who was texting and driving. He admitted at the scene of the accident that he got a text and looked down to read it and never saw the light turn red. He never even slowed down.

I received a call from the emergency room at the local hospital in her college town which is 6 hours away from home. A terrible phone call when you can’t get to your child. The ER doctor said he thought she had a case of whiplash, but was otherwise ok. When I spoke to her, she said “Mom, I hit my head, it hurts”. The ER doctor assured me her CT scan was good. The EMTs had to pull her from the passenger seat through the drivers side door because her door was too badly damaged to open without cutting her out. The doctor sent her off with a prescription of pain meds and I spoke with her again while she was at the pharmacy. She seemed to be in good spirits and I went to bed feeling like a pretty lucky momma.

And then, she called at 2:00 am, screaming. She tried to lay down in bed and the pain was too much to bear. That was the beginning of what has been a nightmare for her. The second diagnosis was concussion. My husband ended up going to get her and bringing her home a week early before Thanksgiving break, because something did not seem quite right and we wanted her to see our doctor, because we trust him so much.

The real diagnosis in the end has been Post Concussion Syndrome. It is the same thing that NFL players often suffer from after being hit in the head too many times. We all felt like it was just too much for her to handle school and this new reality of dealing with her life after the injury and tried to talk her in to taking time off from school or maybe not going back at all.

She is a hard headed little thing and when she said she was going back and finishing school, I told our doctor, she might be just hard headed enough to pull it off and she has. It’s been a struggle everyday for her. Days when her head hurt so badly, she couldn’t move. Nights when she couldn’t sleep at all because it hurt too much to lay down. Classes that she had to retake, because she just couldn’t make it to class too many days. So many times, I just wanted to drive there and pick her up and make her come home.

But, I have always believed that our children belong to themselves and to God. I was just blessed that he allowed me to be their mom. So, I didn’t make her come home and she finished. It took her two extra years, but she finished. Today she will graduate from college. She made it.

While she is finished with school, she will probably never be finished with the migraines, the enormous amount of medication it takes to keep her functional and that give her the ability to lay down and sleep. Even on the medications, being any place loud, like a movie theater sets off her headaches every time. There are questions about how she will get through pregnancy when she is ready to have children, because you are not able to stay on these medications while you are pregnant.

The bad thing about all of this? I was a lucky momma to get that phone call. I am so thankful that she is still here. Many, many other moms are not so lucky. Recent research has found that texting and driving is more dangerous than driving drunk. Studies have shown you are 6% more likely to have a car accident if you are texting and driving than if you are driving intoxicated. The statistics for teenagers that are distracted while driving are even worse.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute conducted a study on truck drivers that text while driving and found that they were 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident. The average time that a driver was distracted by texting and driving was 4.6 seconds. That doesn’t sound like a big deal right? Wrong. At 55mph, the same study shows, that your car travels the length of a football field in those 4.6 seconds.

Next time you are at a football game, take a good look at how far that really is to basically be driving blind. Imagine that it has people standing on it. Someone’s children, someone’s parents, grandparents. Now, how about I put you in a car at one end of the field and blindfold you and tell you to drive to the other end. Oh, and by the way, the people on the field are not allowed to move even if you are coming towards them. What if they were all people you love? Would you drive that field? That is the position you put yourself in every day if you text and drive. The people around you don’t know you are texting and driving. They don’t know you are distracted. Many times they don’t have the luxury of getting out of your way. My daughter didn’t.

Like I said we are lucky. Some parents will never get the chance that I get today. To see someone you absolutely adore accomplish her goals, even if she had to drag herself all the way and it took every ounce of restraint I had as a mother to stand back and let her do it. Don’t text and drive. You don’t want what happened to my daughter, or something much worse, to happen to you or someone you love, but you know what you really don’t want? You don’t want to be the person that did it to someone else, either.

So, for at least today, in honor of Laura Lee, for me…no texting and driving. I would love to believe that while I am sitting there watching this beautiful, strong willed, determined child walk down the aisle and get her diploma, someone is listening to more than just noise.