Manageable Compulsion or Deadly Addiction?
Everyday in the United States nine people are killed due to distracted driving. Matt Richtel analyzes this problem in his book, A Deadly Wandering, and explores the topic of why people continue to text and drive, despite knowing how dangerous it is. Richtel explains the conundrum of why so many people choose to put their own lives and the lives of others in danger to send a text on the following factors. Most convincingly, Richtel points towards the neuroscience behind why some people cannot seem to put down their phones, going as far as to propose that addiction to technology may be the cause of texting and driving. Additionally, blame is placed on society’s pressure to be connected all the time.
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Richtel does shows how few people are immune to the social pressures created by technology, and talks about the constant theme in everyday life “reinforcing the idea that it is uncool, foolish, not to be connected all the time”. Additionally, the business world is shown to contribute to texting and driving. While some people may find it easy to ignore a text from a friend, if they think their job is on the line, it might be much more difficult to resist. Unfortunately, Richtel includes these explanations as secondary add-ons to the neurological reasons, instead of fully developed causes that deserve just as much attention as the neuroscience does. When discussing examples of texting and driving, Richtel tends to focus mostly on teenagers, like the five high school cheerleaders who died in a texting and driving accident in New York. Examples such as these almost belittle the validity of the social pressures behind texting and driving because it is as if Richtel is saying that while high school cheerleaders might succumb to distracted driving due to social pressures, the reason most people do it is because they are addicted to