Thread by @WarrenJWells

Personal confession:

One of the reasons am such a jerk about texting and driving is that, when I was 22, I totalled my car doing exactly that.

I've only told this to a couple people.
🧵

This was in 2009, i.e. before smartphones.

I was going to frisbee practice and pulling up to a light. My phone buzzed with a text and, as I slowed down, I checked who it was from.

I thought I had space between me and the next car but I looked up just as I crashed into it.

Luckily I wasn't going that fast, maybe 8 or 10 mph. My airbags didn't even deploy. But it was still enough force to crush my car's radiator.

Thanks to forces beyond my control, no one was hurt.

If there had been someone biking ahead of me, god knows how hurt they would have been.

It's the only time I ever crashed a car (and I've never even gotten a traffic ticket), but the result that day was because I was lucky not because I was good.

The car I bought to replace the one I totalled was a stick-shift Corolla, one I literally could use my phone in.

This is why, when I'm in the car with someone and they pick up their phone, I offer to let them dictate a text.

It's why I politely ask drivers to stop staring into their phones (they usually don't see me, naturally).

Pedestrian deaths have increased 50%(!!) in the last 10 years.

It's not clear the exact degree to which distracted driving has contributed to this, but I'll guarantee it's a significant factor.

While there is *absolutely* meaningful and necessary work to do on changing out physical infrastructure, we need to immediately do everything we can to stop drivers from staring at phones while operating multi-ton vehicles.

If you drive a car, put your phone away. If you're in a car with someone using their phone, ask them to stop.

Distracted driving is a the drunk driving of our time, and we can't make our roads safer until we actually decide that it is a problem and try to fix it.

/🧵

Could not*