Texting and Driving is Not Loving Your Neighbor. It Could Kill Them.

Ping! A new text arrives while you drive home from work. You quickly glance down at your phone and shoot off a response before you forget, and —BOOM! You slam into a car stopped at a red light in front of you for an easy-to-avoid fender bender.

This type of thing happens every day, and sometimes the results are a lot more devastating.

In March of 2017 in central Texas, a 20-year-old driver admitted his texting caused the collision that killed thirteen people on the way back from a church retreat. While scrolling my Facebook feed recently, the below photo popped up. Greg West, the founder/editor of the apologetics website The Poached Egg, had narrowly escaped from an accident likely caused by texting and driving. (His assumption is that the teen girl who hit him ran a red light due to texting.)

Texting and driving is the reason I don’t run along busy roads anymore, and am hyper-aware when I run on any road. It may seem overly cautious to you, but I don’t want to put my life into the hands of a person whose hands (and attention) are already full!¹

So what can be done?

Already, 46 of 50 states in the US have banned texting and driving. This seems like the logical solution, right?—ban something and you wipe it out of existence. Unfortunately, laws have worsened the problem. Instead of following the law, drivers lower their phones below the sight-line of police and other drivers, and make the problem worse—they have to look further down for a longer amount of time to read and send texts.²

Savvy phone users might recommend using the Voice-to-Text feature to keep eyes on the road and still text, but the National Safety Council reports that the Voice-to-Text feature is actually “more distracting than typing texts by hand.” Gulp. Similarly, using a Bluetooth device for hands-free phone use isn’t risk-free.

Hopefully the danger of texting and driving will cause more drivers to put down the phone, but obviously, there is no silver-bullet answer. We each must do our part and focus on the road. As Christians, putting the phone down and focusing on the road follows the gospel imperative to love your neighbor as yourself. Every car on the road is operated by a man or woman created in God’s image who has an eternal destiny.

Loving Your Neighbor

There are a few practical ways to love your neighbor by minimizing risk behind the wheel. As you consider them, be sure to know the laws of your state or locality.

1. Simply don’t use your phone in the car. (Legal in all 50 states! 🙂 )
2. Pull over if you need to text or take an important call.
3. Tell those you would normally text that you will text them back at your destination.
4. If you need to use your phone while driving (and it is legal where you live), survey your surroundings to make sure it is a safe time. If you glance at your phone, make it quick. Studies show that a driver can safely glance away from the road for only two seconds (!!!).
5. Realize that many accidents happen because people think they are smarter/more clever than the statistics.
6. If you constantly fiddle with your phone while behind the wheel, ask God to take away your desire to drive distracted and for a greater love of others.

I used to text while driving all the time. I finally stopped after a few close calls that woke me up to the danger my behavior posed to myself and others. It’s not only a question of wisdom and personal safety, it is loving your neighbor. And you can’t love your neighbor by putting their lives in danger.

¹ Texting isn’t the only culprit. Distracted driving of any kind (checking emails, switching podcasts, and tweeting) skyrockets your chances of a crash—and thus potentially taking the life of others made in God’s image. See more in 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. (Read my review.)

² “HLDI Study: Texting Bans don’t Reduce Crashes; Effects are Slight Crash Increases.”

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