Smoking and Driving

By Rachel Kulikowski

Senior Staff Writer

It was a warm summer night in August. That summer, I had just received my first car. It was an older green Volkswagen Jetta that smelled like aged leather inside. I remember being extremely happy about the freedom that comes with having a car. That night I been hanging out at a friends house and it was getting late. At this point I felt everyone was becoming tired including me, so I decided to head home. Sometimes relaxing summer nights have a way of making you feel like nothing could go wrong, but I had been mistaken.

I yawned as I put my key into the ignition and started to drive off. Even though I only lived across town I definitely was exhausted so I decided the best thing to do was turn up the music and light up a cigarette. This probably was not a good idea however, I was not worried about it because I thought for some odd reason multitasking would wake me up. At this point I was only a few blocks away from my house when I dropped the cigarette I was smoking as I was still driving. I recall the cigarette falling to the ground but the burning ember on the end fell onto my bare leg and was burning my skin. This resulted in me taking my eyes off the road for a split second and slamming my car into a tree. I looked up and all I could see was an airbag and broken glass.

For anyone who's been in a serious automobile accident when it is your fault, you probably can relate to the anxiety I felt at that moment. It’s almost hard to describe. And for a split second it almost did not feel real. Reality did rush into my brain quickly as I tasted blood in my mouth and the strong scent of gasoline leaked into my nose. I was not hurt to bad just broke my nose so I was able to step out of the vehicle. The car was not okay though it was wrapped around the tree and smoke was pouring out of it. I did realize that my cell phone was somewhere in the car but I was too panicked to go back in and search through the car.

Something that I thought was pretty strange was that there were houses everywhere, yet everyones houses remained dark. No one turned their lights on or looked outside everything around me was still so calm. I wondered how no one heard that happen. I definitely needed help and felt relief when a neighboring house’s kitchen light came on and a door opened. I saw an older woman looking at me so I approached her door to ask her if she could call the police but she slammed the door. I knocked on the door and her kitchen light went off. At that point I felt extremely helpless.

I never thought of myself as a threatening looking person, maybe it was because I had blood all over my shirt but clearly there was a crashed car right behind me. I thought maybe the woman was going to call the police so I sat on the curb when a Cutlass Supreme pulls up. An older man with long hair got out of the car and told me he’d call the police. He let me use his phone to call my mom and gave me a bottle of water. I was happy someone did help me and it was not a weirdo he was actually a nice guy. When the police arrived the woman who originally slammed the door in my face emerged from her house commenting that she heard glass breaking, so I guess she was not going to call the police at all which is why I was lucky that the guy in the Cutlass pulled up. This was a very bad situation, I only had the car for a short time and had already destroyed it. I couldn't help  that I had to drive home tired but I could have just concentrated on the road rather than smoking and playing with the radio. I did not expect that to happen at all.

According to E.how.com "Smoking-related tasks are considered in the category of driver inattentiveness as noted in a 2006 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration titled "The Impact of Driver Inattention on Near-Crash/Crash Risk. Drivers who are engaged in tasks not related to driving, such as reaching for a cigarette, lighting or extinguishing the cigarette and smoking while driving, increase the risk of having an accident by two-to-three times that of normal driving.”

Totaling my first car was a dangerous but important lesson for me. I actually really have been a lot more careful since that night. The car I currently own I received about 6 years ago and have no had a major accidents. That night could have been a lot worse I could have had someone else in the car, hit a person rather than a tree, and I think about these things to this day which is why it’s important for everyone to be careful, cars are expensive, and multitasking and driving is definitely not worth it. This is something I am sure everyone knows but takes for granted.