With my heart pounding and a feeling of confusion, terror overtook my body when I looked up and saw my car swerving off the road. As I first began to drive, I thought I would never pick up my phone while behind the wheel. My mom always told me to never text and drive, but growing up and seeing her doing it made it look so easy. On my sixteenth birthday, she told me once again that it’s dangerous and not to do it, yet I still took the risk to pick up my phone whether it was to see what time it was or to text someone back. I’ve learned that no matter how important a text, call, tweets, or anything else is to never to pick up my phone. I had to learn that the scary way.

From my experiences driving, it is important for every driver to know the importance of safety behind the wheel. Not only does it affect the person driving, but it also affects the other driver who was paying attention to the road. One day on a journey down Steinmaier Road, a sharp, curvy road, heading back to my dad’s house, I received a text from my friend, Amber. I decided to look to see what it said, and I figured it would be okay to text her back quickly. In those short, few seconds of not paying attention to the road, I heard the crumbling and crunching of rocks under my tires. I frantically looked up and noticed that my car was heading to the right and straight off the road. Quickly, I gripped on to the steering wheel, jerked my car back on to the road, and began to fishtail. At this time I was not thinking about the car’s speed or knowing that would happen. I was terrified to the point where I had many thoughts running through my head. I was thinking, ‘What if I wouldn’t have looked up?’ or ‘Wow! What if other cars would have been coming? What would have been the outcome of that?’ The feeling of the chills running through my body at this time felt like I was rolling around in snow. It was almost unexplainable. At this point I threw my phone in the back seat and said to myself, ‘I am never going to pick up my phone while driving again.’ I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the grey, smoky dust clouds, filled with dirt and rocks, billow up behind me. My heart rapidly pounded. Today I look back and think how lucky I am that I didn’t wreck my car or that no other vehicles had been driving on that road. I am very blessed to know that I was safe and protected in my car.