Take the Pledge

This is something that is incredibly important to me. When my  husband and I first got our cell phone I was extremely reluctant to answer it while I was driving. The only time we ever use the phone anyway is while one of us is out of town. Earlier on, once in a while I would answer the phone when I was driving. The trouble is, I always noticed I wasn’t able to give all my attention to my driving plus to the phone call. Worse than that, I notice every single day how people are TOTALLY inattentive when driving and, sure enough, they are on their cell phone. But what boggles my mind are the people who actually TEXT while driving. That is insane. No other way to refer to that.

Today is National No Phone Zone Day. This is a movement started by Oprah Winfrey. Months before she began this movement I had already made the decision that I would no longer take phone calls while driving. After watching her first program on the problem of distracted driving, that clinched my decision to never ever use the phone while driving. I now pull over and phone the person back or else wait until I’m at my destination and then return the phone call.

If you haven’t thought about how distracting it is to talk on the phone while driving, please give it some consideration. If you have ever texted or attempted to text while driving, I am sorry but that is totally insane and irresponsible. I’m going out on a limb by sharing this in my business blog but it means that much to me. If you are not aware of how dangerous talking on the phone and texting while driving are, I urge you to please check out all the true stories, videos, news reports, etc. on the No Phone Zone website. So many innocent lives of wives, mothers, children, fathers, sons, husbands are lost every day as a direct result of driving while talking on the phone and texting and driving. These accidents should not have happened; how many more have to die before we take a stand?

By changing this one bad habit, you could save lives that might be lost in the future. Those lives could even be your own or your family’s lives. No phone call, and definitely no text, is worth the potential accident or lives lost. And no phone call/text is so important that it cannot wait until we pull over or arrive at our destination.

I am so passionate about this. This is just as serious as people who drive while under the influence. Please do watch a couple of those videos. One father was talking to his son while his son was driving home. Suddenly, the phone went dead. The son didn’t show up. An hour later, the police showed up at the father’s door. His son had died when he hit a tree, while talking to his dad on the cell phone. That’s just one of the true stories of loss because of distracted driving. I do hope you will consider taking the pledge. Here is the video of the program that began this movement.