A Close Call. Was that Text Important?

By RICK BOSTON

Staff Writer

According to the Center for Disease Control, nine people are killed and more than 1,000 injured each day due to distracted driving.

Last Wednesday I was a split second from becoming part of those statistics.

I was driving on Route 866 from Martinsburg to Williamsburg when a vehicle came over the crest of the hill and veered into my lane and headed straight toward me.

The speed limit on that stretch of road is 45 miles per hour, which is what I was going, and I assume the other vehicle was doing the same.

My first thought was that the driver would realize they were too far in the other lane and quickly correct, but it became horrifyingly clear that wasn’t going to happen.

With no shoulder to pull over to, I was at the mercy of this mammoth box of steel heading right at me. The only thing I could do was blast my horn, hoping to get the driver’s attention.

As the vehicle got closer it became frighteningly clear to me that the driver was not going to look up.

As I stared at the vehicle, trying to process what was going on, I saw exactly why this crash was about to happen, and although it would be labeled an “accident,” it certainly would not be in the truest sense.

As my horn blared and my heart raced, the driver of the other vehicle was blissfully unaware that in seconds he was about to hit me head-on, changing everyone’s lives forever.

Why didn’t this driver notice he was coming right at me? Texting. Yes, as he got closer I saw his phone in his hands, perched on top of the steering wheel typing away as though sitting at a desk.

In the approximate 10 seconds from the time he came over the hill and into my lane, not once did this driver look up from his phone. He was so engrossed in texting that he didn’t even feel his vehicle drifting into the other lane.

One thing I learned last Wednesday is that a lot can happen in 10 seconds.

In those 10 seconds I went from furiously trying to get this driver’s attention to resigning myself to my fate. I switched from offense to defense as I tried to figure out how to lessen the impact.

With no shoulder to pull over to, I was trapped. If a collision was going to occur, it was going to be head-on. There was just no getting out of that.

As the other vehicle got closer, and the driver kept texting, I started thinking other thoughts. “How bad is this going to hurt?” Something bad was about to happen to me because another person was texting while driving.

The last thought that came to my mind is that I didn’t want the last thing I saw on this earth to be the image of a texting driver coming at me, so I looked over his vehicle to the blue skies over Williamsburg.

And then it was over. With not more an a few inches to spare, the other driver finally looked up. Perhaps he heard my horn, perhaps he was done with his text conversation. He finally swerved back toward his lane, and with such little time to spare the wind of his vehicle could be felt in mine.

I went through three stages in 10 seconds. Fear, acceptance and anger.

I was angry because another human being thought typing on a phone was more important than the lives of anyone else on the road.

I was angry because my daughter could have grown up without me because someone couldn’t wait until they were safely stopped to hold a conversation through text.

I was angry because this incident made me realize that there is no such thing as “it won’t happen to me.”

Chances are the texting driver is a decent person. I assume he had somewhere to be and when he got in his vehicle he never gave a thought to the possibility of not arriving at his destination safely.

Assuming this, what would cause a person to put themselves and others at risk of injury or death by putting the focus on texting rather than driving?

Why do people who would never point a loaded gun at another human being find it acceptable to look anywhere but on the road in front of them while driving?

On most two-lane roads, there is maybe three feet separating two vehicles moving toward each other from opposite directions. With so little room for error why aren’t we giving our driving our undivided attention?

At what point did we lose sight of the fact that these machines of convenience are transformed into deadly weapons if not used properly?

Each time we get in the car we are at the mercy of everyone else on the road. We drive down a two-lane highway at 55 mph and just assume the car heading toward you is going to stay in its lane.

We assume the driver of an oncoming vehicle is paying attention and values their life as much as you do yours.

With such little room for error on our roads, legitimate accidents happen. A tire can blow, an animal can run out in front of you, there could be an obstruction in the road. All these things could cause us to lose control of our vehicle and end up in the wrong lane.

These are unfortunate, but most times unavoidable.

There are many things beyond our control that can go wrong while driving, yet it’s the distractions we can control that are causing the most accidents.

According to the CDC, about 90 people will die in a motor vehicle crash today. Nine of those will be because of distracted driving.

Please put your phone down, when driving. Could you live with yourself if you caused one of those nine deaths over an “LOL?”