So here it is… the final blog post, but that does not mean this is the conclusion to my journey to safe driving. This scholarship opportunity has really opened my eyes to how I have been driving the past few months and that I really need to pay attention to other drivers as much as I’m paying attention to my own driving. (Especially since I live in a heavily populated tourist town)

Driving home from college for the holidays has made me realize that I have made so many improvements and here is a brief discussion of them.

1. Eating and driving

So when I started this scholarship entry this was the main improvement I wanted to work on. I can proudly say that I DO NOT eat chick-fil-a fries any more while driving… Well I don’t eat anything while driving anymore but the fries were the hardest obstacle to overcome. I have recently noticed that my life has just been non stop lately and eating in the car on the way to places just seemed like it saved me so much time but in reality, its so dangerous.

2. Texting and driving

This one was a quick fix for me as I have never really been so easily distracted by texting and driving. Don’t get me wrong, when something that I thought was “important” such as what time Sally wanted everyone to come over to her house to watch the new bachelor episode, I made sure to answer the text as soon as I got to a red light. Now, after doing all of this research, I have realized that it can wait. It is most definitely not that important. According enddd.org, text messaging increases the risk of crash or near-crash by 23 times. That is a huge increase of risk that I am not willing to be affected by just to read a text message or to type one out. Like they say… IT CAN WAIT.

3. Music in the car

If you have been keeping up with my other blog post you know that this is the one I have been struggling with the most. I have an addiction to music and driving is normally the time I get to be alone and listen to my favorite songs and to jam as hard as I can with no judgement. But in reality, that is not what driving is for. I can proudly say that I don’t change the music while I am driving as much as I used to and now I wait until I am at a red light to do it. There is still more room for improvement when it comes to changing songs but I have stopped jamming like crazy.I still turn the music up basically as loud as it can go, BUT I don’t dance like a maniac. So like I said earlier, just because this is my last post, it does not mean this is the end of my safe driving journey.

4. Freaking out on other (annoying) drivers.

I am not the one to have any type of road rage at all but my roommate does. I have been trying to not drive as much as I have been terrified from my car accident back in August so she has been offering to drive me places. The only problem with that is that her road rage, angry yelling, and arm swinging was rubbing off on me. THANKFULLY, because of this, I gave myself a reality check. There is absolutely no need to freak out on other drivers. So what they cut you off… what is screaming at them in your own car going to do?? They can’t even hear you. I have realized that this has just become a distraction for me and I have started to put an end to it.

The minute I got to Georgia I did realize the amount of people texting and driving did go down drastically which obviously is a great thing for driving in GA but it kind of upsets me that it isn’t like that every where. Georgia has a no phone in hand (or on your body) law and they have been taking it very seriously with fining people and putting points on licenses. “Violators face a $50 fine for first conviction; $100 for second; and $150 for third and subsequent convictions.” https://www.al.com/news/2018/07/georgias_new_hands-free_cell_p.html I remember the day that this law started, everyone went to Best Buy and Walmart to buy a mount for their phones to use when driving. I personally love this law and wish more states would use it as it helps prevent so many accidents. Georgia is actually only the 16th state to have this type of law.

Over all, this scholarship opertunity has opened my eyes to how I have been driving and I am thankful for that. I strongly encourage you to take the safe drivers pledge. https://www.gjel.com/scholarship

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Hope you enjoyed reading my blog post!

So as my title states, the week I am writing about took place over the Thanksgiving holiday. This was such an awesome week as my family came to Orlando (along with a thousand other families) to celebrate. I live about ten to fifteen minutes away from Disney so you can only imagine how many tourists are in this area during the holiday season which makes it all the more important for me to not get distracted while driving. Many people driving around my area are looking at the GPS, making wrong turns or getting lost, or trying to deal with a car full of family. My parents tell me every day to make sure I am watching out for other people as much as I am paying attention to the road because there are a lot of people who don’t know where they are going and if I get distracted for a single second it could be a huge mistake.

So far through out my safe driving journey, I believe I have improved quite a bit. I have stopped checking my text messages and I have also stopped eating food on my way to my destinations. I still really need to focus on not changing music while driving but it is getting better. I have started to put songs in my queue before I start to drive off but I still tend to treat my car like a concert stage. And my dad has told me this so many times, when I am driving, I am not on a concert stage or singing in the shower. I don’t need to be changing music, dancing, blasting my radio as loud as it can go, or even screaming the songs at the top of my lungs. I am driving a car and that needs to be my main focus. Here’s a gif of what I definitely should NOT be doing…

As happy as I am that I am doing this scholarship to learn what I can do to better my driving, I wish the people around me would try to work on theirs as well. On Thanksgiving day, I had a friend call me who was very upset. My friend had spent the whole day drinking and watching football with his family at a friends house which happened to be an hour away from where we live. My friend called me from his car crying because he had gotten into a big fight with his dad and he just wanted to go home. At first I was furious that he was even in his car after he had been drinking. Then I realized that I couldn’t sit here and be mad at him because he stopped and made a choice to call me before he started driving.

I sat on the phone with him for at least an hour trying to talk to him about how everything was going to be okay as long as he didn’t press the gas and start driving away. Someone could have gotten seriously injured or even killed and I am just so thankful that he called me before he did anything. Doing all of this research for the safe driving scholarship has really helped me understand how important it is to just simply focus on the road. People make it so easy to get distracted and with a blink of an eye make the wrong decision.

What can you do to prevent distracted driving?

Here is a video that will go through a few tips to help you figure out what you can do to improve your driving.

A few states are making huge strides in the fight against texting and driving by banning the use of cells phones all together. I know that my hometown state Georgia has banned the use of cell phones all together. If you want to talk to someone on the phone, it has to be through blue tooth. Your phone can not be in your hand, lap, seat, pocket. It must be away from you at all times. If you want to use your phone for GPS, it must be mounted on a vent or on the dashboard/ windshield. I really like this law and wish that more states would follow this example. In Florida, the state I am attending college in, does not have one of these laws and it is quite frustrating to constantly see people driving while using their phones.

So here is my weeks recap for Thanksgiving week:

What I improved:

Took my schools shuttle from one campus to the other to limit my driving for that day which helps prevent me from getting into my own accident.

Taking a minute before I started driving to queue my music so I did not do it while I was driving.

Sharing information with friends about distracted driving and to not drink and drive.

Did not eat my french fries on the way home from chick-fil-a for the third time in a row!

What I could still improve on:

Not singing and dancing in the car while I am driving.

Spread the word even more on how to prevent distracted driving.

Stop holding my phone while I am using my GPS.

Well this concludes my third week on my journey to safe driving. I hope you are enjoying my blog post and I hope I was able to make an impact on your thoughts when it comes to distracted driving. Here is a link to the GJEL scholarship as well as their facebook page! https://www.gjel.com/scholarship https://www.facebook.com/GJELAttorneys/

So this did not go as well as I planned it to. I thought it would be so easy for me to return back to my old ways of not being a distracted driver and never touching my phone or messing with the radio too much. Turns out I was wrong. Really wrong.

This week I had a lot of events going on. I had a music festival, school projects due, and my best friends birthday party (which I was planning) so you can only imagine how much planning and collaborating I was doing with my friends so that everything was going smoothly.

Most of the time if someone were to text me, I would wait until a stoplight to look at it to make sure no one needed the information right away. But looking back at it, I am honestly mad at myself. I was just in an accident 2 months ago because of distracted driving and was I really caring this little about it happening again?

After sitting here thinking about why I let myself get distracted, I realized that my phone has not only become a distraction but it has also become an addiction. I am constantly checking in on my friends making sure we have everything planned perfectly and if something goes wrong I have a NEED to reply in an instant. But it should not be like that. If something is really wrong or someone needs my attention that badly, they can call me since I have apple car play set up in my car. Thankfully, my car has a favorites tab on the apple car play app which makes it super easy for me to call someone if needed. I don’t have to go scrolling through my phone to find who I want to call because all of my most popular numbers are displayed right there on the screen! Over the next week I am determined to completely stop checking my messages if I have not reached my destination yet.

Here is a link of a short video about us being addicted to our phones.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGHno_D1PrE

My second biggest distraction this past week was with out a doubt, Spotify. I love music. (Maybe a little too much) It is very hard to find a song that I don’t like which makes my favorite music playlist very very long. My all time favorite playlist is currently clocking in at a whopping 23 hours and 50 minutes long. That’s a lot of songs to pick from. This past week I have not been choosing my queue of songs before I start driving which makes me distracted when I want to listen to certain songs.

I know that scrolling and scrolling to find a certain song to jam too is just as bad a texting and driving and this is something I really need to work on in the following weeks. This is a distraction that is very easy to correct as long as I just tell myself to stop when I go to change the song. This week, before I start driving, I will take a minute before I start driving and make sure to queue all of the songs I might be in the mood for.

In order to end on a positive note, I want to talk about the things I have improved on. There were a few improvements including not eating while driving and taking my schools shuttle in order to get from campus to campus.

My proudest improvement this week was not eating while I was driving. I can’t really remember why I waited until I was so hungry, but I was STARVING on my way to Chick-Fi-A last Friday. Normally, I eat the french fries on my way home because most of the time I don’t know how to control myself when there are french fries added into the situation. But this past Friday, even though I was starving, I waited until I got home to eat all of my food even when the Chick-Fil-A bag was starring me down just begging me to eat the fries.

Some days I just keep going and going and I don’t take a minute to slow down and focus on the task I am doing and this is something I really need to work on this next week.

Make sure you go to https://www.gjel.com/scholarship to take the pledge and join me on a journey to safe driving!

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