Teen Driving : Distractions, Part 2

Posted by Lauren Thomas in English 1 - Dunn on

Teen Driving : Distractions, Part 2

All images found in this blog post, and only this blog post were taken by me via screenshot. 


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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.27.56 PM
Hello again! My name is Lauren Thomas. I am a freshman from Science Leadership Academy. I am writing a series of blogs called You and the World. For more information, I urge you to read my first blog post. 


For our second blog post we needed to create an interview or survey. I decided to create a interview and ask a fellow classmate questions. I based my interview off of Heads Up! The Interactive Challenge which is a stimulator-type game. The game was created by a partnership of Toyota’s Teen Driver and Discovery Education. In the game you are a teen driving behind the wheel of a car of your choice. You choose wether you are left- or right-handed and begin the game. 


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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.29.19 PM
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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.29.32 PM

Thank you to Dillon Hershey, 15 years old, for allowing me to interview her. She has no prior experience driving a real-life vehicle. All the questions were written by me and all the answers were written by Dillon. The game is a creation of Discovery Communications, LLC © 2012.


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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.29.51 PM
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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.30.05 PM
Dillon’s results on Challenge 1: 

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Screen Shot 2013-01-15 at 9.21.10 AM
Q: How many road-side collisions did you have? How did you feel taking the first level? Was your attention split? 

A: I had 10, and it was hard to learn how to drive. My attention was split a little but not much.


In 2008, as the statistic above shows, 63% of teenager passenger deaths happened in vehicles driven by an teenager. Click here to learn more. 


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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.34.18 PM
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Screen Shot 2013-01-11 at 2.37.32 PM
Dillon’s Result on Challenge 2 :
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Screen Shot 2013-01-17 at 9.59.54 AM
Q: Was it hard to drive, stop, and eat at the same time? 

A: It was hard to because when you would stop and eat, the car would start to move around again. Also they had your attention be focused on eating and stopping at the stop signs.


The statistic above : About 2/3 of fatal teen crashes involve the driving making an error. This error is due to inexperience and distractions. Read more here. 


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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.35.59 PM
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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.36.09 PM
Dillon’s result on Challenge 3 : 
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Screen Shot 2013-01-17 at 10.02.05 AM
Q: Did you find it difficult to keep on hand on the mouse and the other efficiently tuning a radio?  What was your distraction rate? Did you feel distracted looking at the radio and road?

A: It was really hard to keep track of what radio station you had change it to. I was really distracted!


The statistic above shows that 84% of teenage girls and 69% of teenage boys are likely to adjust music selection and/or volume while driving. Lean more here. 

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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.38.01 PM
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Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1.38.11 PM
Dillon’s results for Challenge 4 :
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Screen Shot 2013-01-17 at 10.05.41 AM
Q: Texting and driving is the most dangerous. How did you feel when driving and typing at the same time? How many road-side collisions did you have? Missed signs? How much were you distracted? 

A: I ran off the edge so many times!!! I had 20 and 1 missed sign because I let up the break too early. I was VERY distracted because I had to choose what I wanted to text back to the person.


In my opinion, the above statistic is the most important because texting or talking on the phone while driving is the most dangerous! Please, I urge you to learn more here. 


Q: Was there any point in the game that you felt the feeling of being overwhelmed by too many tasks might happen to a teen driver? Did it happen to you, a person who has not driven yet? 

A: YES I WAS SO OVERWHELMED!! It was overwhelming because of all the tasks that I had to do. I really like the idea of the game because the driving is really hard and that is how it really is.


Q: At what age do you think a teen is allowed to drive? Would you allow your child to drive at that age?

A: 18 and I would let my kid drive but after I had the talk about texting and driving.


Q: Is there any other points you would like to bring up? Do you think the real experience will be harder, easier? 

A: The actual driving is not very real but the distractions are real. Also I think that the real experience will be harder but of course I won’t text and drive. 


Thank you again to Dillon for participating in this interview. Please read her You and the World project concerning Pet Euthanasia. Check back soon for my third blog post. My bibliography is here. My third blog post is here. Thank you. 

Comments (5)

Anna Sugrue (Student 2016)
Anna Sugrue

This blog is easy to read and well put together. The pictures are organized in a way that makes the playing process easy to follow (and also makes me want to play the game!). I love how Dillonesc the responses were - how you used exclamation points in a way that made the text read like speech. You should make this game more popular it seems like both you and Dillon learned a lot while still having fun.