Casey Feldman, 21, was crossing a crosswalk on the way in which to her summer time job in Ocean City, N.J. in 2009 when she was hit by a distracted driver, slicing the aspiring journalist’s life quick.
In the wake of her loss of life, her father has made it his life’s mission to stop one other dad or mum’s worst nightmare.
“We used to say we wanted to raise awareness about distracted driving. We don’t say that anymore,” Joel Feldman, Casey’s father stated. “People know it’s dangerous, but they do it anyway. We want to stop distracted driving.”
Feldman based End Distracted Driving, a corporation that’s partnering with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to pioneer new analysis on teenagers’ distracted driving geared toward making a youth-driven program to chop down on it.
The 15-month research will differ from present ones that depend on instruments like driving simulators. Instead, it’ll include surveys and focus teams of teenagers, the place they’ll be requested about their motivations for distracted driving and what messages would resonate with them to finish it.
It will then culminate in a distracted driving video and lesson plan devised by teenagers and disseminated to excessive faculties throughout the nation, versus present packages developed by adults.
“I’m not going to talk to people who have driven at least a couple of years about the dangers of distracted driving,” Feldman stated. “We all know it, but it doesn’t matter because we don’t think it’s dangerous when we do it. We think we’re great drivers.” He famous that in surveys of excessive schoolers he’s spoken with, 70% of them say their dad and mom drive distracted.
In Massachusetts, 271 out of two,340, or 12% of deadly crashes between 2014 and 2020 had been resulting from distracted driving, based on the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Of these 271 crashes, 20 had been attributable to teenagers, 85% of whom had been male.
Rebecca Robbins, an teacher at Harvard Medical School and the principal investigator on the research, famous a number of the explanation why teenagers are a perfect goal for this analysis.
“The whole goal is to really intervene when people are licensed, and then have this kind of ‘Aha!,’ a light bulb go off, that stays with them for the rest of their lives, and can then support healthy decision architecture relating to driving behavior,” she stated.
Besides the truth that teenagers are much less skilled drivers, “the current generation in particular has grown up with cell phones, and they’re part of the fabric of daily life,” she added. “In high school, there’s often pressure from the fear of missing out … So many aspects of our lives are set up for instantaneous responses.”
Teens are additionally sleep-deprived and haven’t absolutely developed the right decision-making abilities to place their telephones down.
Feldman added that teenagers are inclined to take a stronger ethical stance towards distracted driving in his expertise. When he exhibits dad and mom and youths a video of a distracted bus driver, solely the kids use phrases like “selfish” and “disrespectful” to explain his actions.
He desires teenagers to see driving with out distractions as an indication of respect to different drivers on the street and passengers within the automotive.
“I want them to feel really uncomfortable the next time they get in the car if they haven’t put their phone on airplane mode, they haven’t put it on Do Not Disturb while driving.”
Emily Stein, a Massachusetts resident who misplaced her father in a distracted driving accident, pushed arduous for the hands-free driving regulation to be handed within the state in 2019.
“It’s one of the scariest things when you see drivers not looking at the road,” she stated in an e mail. “They simply cannot be in control of their car if they are not looking at the road. America has a serious problem.”
Her group, Safe Roads Alliance, has partnered with Feldman’s group to show college students in grades 2-6 in regards to the risks of distracted driving and the way to communicate up in the event that they’re within the automotive with a distracted driver. Methuen and Medford Public Schools are bringing this program to their school rooms this spring.
A spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security famous that the Baker administration has awarded $70.7 million in grants to advertise freeway security since 2015.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”