We had a short spell of warm, dry weather here in Georgia last week, and as you can imagine, I took advantage of that to get in some two-wheeled time. I even took a day off from work for a day when the weather forecast looked particularly promising, and I was rewarded by a great day of warm weather riding through the back country.
At the end of this day, I had a dinner date with Maria Duron, the founder of Brandchat, who I’ve been following for several years. That meeting was probably worth a blog post by itself, but I was so struck by what I saw on my way home that I felt compelled to write about it.
I rode my motorcycle to dinner, as the warmth of the day seemed to want to continue into the night. On the way home, I hadn’t gone but a couple miles before I pulled up behind a car at a stop light, and saw that they were watching Youtube videos while they were driving!
Now you may be thinking that there was no way I could see what they were watching, but from the higher vantage point of the motorcycle, and the fact they had their phone in a dashboard mount, it was very obvious what was going on.
As a motorcyclist with decades of experience, I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff, but this hit me pretty hard, especially as it became clear to me that this person was paying more attention to the videos she was watching than her driving. Since I felt like my life was on the line, I passed her quickly and moved on down the road.
But that’s not the end of the story…
Dinner was in the northeast Atlanta suburbs, and I live in the northwest Atlanta suburbs – about a 20-mile drive. About halfway home, I pulled behind an SUV at a stop light. Sure enough, on the dash is a phone mount, playing YouTube videos!
Seeing this once is scary to me. Seeing it twice the same night is terrifying.
Could we all start thinking a little differently about what we do when we drive? Forget about all the stats and the fact that when driving distracted, you’re essentially the same as a drunk driver. No matter how much we seem to hear those, it doesn’t seem to get anyone’s attention.
Think about my daughter’s face when you’ve killed me because you weren’t paying attention behind the wheel.
Think about the utter heartbreak you’ve caused when you take a child away from their parent, just so you could watch a video online.
There are lives in your hands. Start acting like it.
Forget distracted driving stats. Instead, think about explaining how you killed me so you could watch Youtube to my daughter. There are lives in your hands. Act like it. Click To Tweet