So I got on my computer earlier this week and my MSN Messenger came up on the screen with news stories. MSNBC had posted a video from the Today Show dealing with drinking and texting while driving. There is a new program out called “Every 15 minutes” and has recently started circulating in Maryland. The school puts on a real life scenario of a drunk driving hitting a pedestrian and killing them. It is cool that the some students in the skit are even related.
According to the video “5100 teenage drivers were killed in alcohol or drug related accidents in 2009.” The schools who choose to take part in “Every 15 minutes” use resources such as local law enforcement to help get the point across. Every 15 minutes in these high schools the Grim Reaper walks around the school and pulls a student out of class, “Each one representing another classmate, another teammate, another friend who won’t be coming back.” Then for the rest of the day (with the help of some costume makeup) these students walk to halls “dead.” They cannot talk, receive phone calls or text for 24 hours to show what it would be like without having them around. When the student is pulled from class, a police officer comes in a reads an obituary written by the “dead” student’s parents.
So after watching this video, I decided to look up some statistics on my own. I won’t personally take the time to discuss the entire page but AlcoholAlert! has some really great charts of so really interesting statistics. I would really encourage you all to look at them. The Century Council also has some shocking stuff on it. It breaks it state down and the cases and has told us. In 2009 there were 300 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities and 41 under 21 alcohol-impaired driving facilities. 72 % of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities involving high BAC drivers . Of 12-20 years olds claimed in 2007-2008, 27% consumed alcohol and 18.4% admitted to binge drinking in the past month. In 2009, 409 individuals under 18 were arrested for driving under the influence. These statistics are absolutely crazy to even begin to think about.
On www.buzzle.com they have an article about texting and driving. One sentence states “The popular belief, that the number of teenagers texting while driving is more as compared to adults, got a major blow when the texting while driving statistics 2010 compiled by Pew Research Center revealed that 47 percent of the adults resort to texting as compared to 34 percent of the teenagers.” I just thought that was a really interesting statistic.
I feel like texting and driving as well as drinking and driving are both problems that our society today faces. I honestly can’t even think of a way to fix these problems. It will be interesting over the next few years to finally see how these issues are dealt with.
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