Crary, Clark, Domanico and Chuang is pleased to announce Isabelle Anselmo as the 2020 CCD Law Spokane Scholarship winner. Isabelle recently graduated from Spokane Valley Tech with a 4.0 GPA. At Spokane Valley Tech, she was the Vice President of the National Honor Society chapter, and was a member of our HOSA Future Health Professionals chapter. Isabelle is also a figure skater with the Lilac City Figure Skating Club. She plans on attending Carroll College in Montana in the fall pursuing pre-medical studies.
This year applicants were asked to create a short essay about texting and driving.
Here’s Isabelle’s answer!
I believe that one of the best ways to solve the texting and driving epidemic and to help create safer streets here in Spokane, is to focus on prevention and to use technology to our advantage. If new teenage drivers learn to practice safe and preventative habits, it will help set them up to continue to be responsible in the future and fully understand the consequences of being on their phone.
I think that an effective preventative step would be to require driving schools to have a victim, family member/friend, or first responder who has directly been affected by texting and driving car accidents to speak to the class and tell them their story. While watching videos can certainly be eye-opening, having a person standing in front of you speaking would be an even more powerful reminder. The experience of listening to someone’s story in person would hopefully be one that sticks with students.
Currently, there are tons of apps out there that work in different ways to combat texting and driving. One app, called Lifesaver, gives parents the ability to lock their child’s phone while their car is moving. Another, called Canary, tracks the driver’s speed, location, and phone usage while driving, and alerts parents if their child is on their phone. When a parent signs up their child for driving school, they should be heavily informed about all of these options, and be encouraged to use them. Most parents obviously want to keep their child safe and responsible, and they know how strict of rules they would need to implement.
A lot of people have good intentions and do not plan on texting and driving, but give in to the temptation when it becomes convenient for them. Both new and old drivers should be more informed on easy ways to hold themselves accountable. Even habits as simple as silencing your phone and putting it somewhere you can’t see or reach can be extremely helpful. Another solution that would be very effective is some sort of program on your phone where if you decide to send a text or email, it would inform whoever you are messaging to that you are choosing to talk to them while you are driving. Solutions that embarrass people for making bad choices could be very helpful. Another idea that could encourage people to avoid texting and driving is to work with mobile carriers to create phone plans that charge more for data/messaging being used while you are driving (excluding using GPS).
As technology and our phones continue to become more prevalent in our daily lives, it is our responsibility to find more ways to ensure that safe driving is a habit, and to enforce the moral obligation to stay focused on the road by creating a strong social stigma against texting and driving. Through education and prevention, we will be able to make the streets of Spokane, and elsewhere, safer.
