Distracted or drunk, it’s same road to ruin

“Keys, please.” We say it to young drivers this time of year, a response to return of warm weather that heralds the dangerous summer season on the roads, when teenage calendars are crowded with high school proms and after parties and drunk driving crashes spike.

It’s not that the young don’t know the sobriety sermons: For decades, their demographic has been bombarded by the public service announcements. “Call home.” “Friends don’t let friends drink and drive.”

The problem is even the most sensible advice can lose its punch when it’s fighting the perfect storm of liberties that the end of school brings — freedom from academic responsibility, freedom to drive and, in parts of Canada at least, freedom to legally drink.

Deadly as that combination can be, however, it’s only half the threat facing all drivers. Even more menacing, especially for young drivers, is the growing scourge of distracted driving. Nationwide, distracted driving has become such a problem, it’s now one of the worst killers on the road. Almost every legislature in the land has passed tough new laws cracking down on such practices.

While earlier generations of drivers kept their eyes peeled for police speed traps and roadside sobriety checks, this generation watches for undercover police standing on traffic islands looking for drivers talking or texting.

Why the young are especially implicated in the illegal use of handheld technology behind the wheel isn’t difficult to understand. Phones, tablets, iPods, earbuds and the like — to teenagers and early twenty-somethings, these are not distractions but a sixth sense through which they interact with the world.

The evidence underscores that disturbing trend.

Insurance company ingenie Canada recently released a survey that found 75% of young drivers report they get distracted by changing the music as they drive. They’re also distracted by texts and e-mails, eating and using their smart phones as maps.

What many young people don’t know is that the odds of a crash jump 23-fold if a driver is texting, with staggering risks for other distractions too. That should be as sobering as any drunk driving PSA.

“Phones, please.”