SPECIAL REPORT: Impacts of distracted driving and how to avoid it

We see distracted driving on a daily basis, but we don’t always see the impacts.

On April 11th, one Santa Cruz mother-to-be experienced the impacts first-hand. Annie Castro was driving on highway 17 when traffic came to a grinding halt, but the teen driver behind her didn’t notice.

“The car in front of me had kind of gone into the shoulder a little bit to make sure he had enough room to stop and I was going less than 5 miles per hour coming to a stop when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw this car careening toward me at a very fast rate and the driver was looking down. And you just tense up in that moment, it’s so scary, you don’t know what to do. There’s nothing you can do except get hit. And that’s what I did,” said Castro.

After the collision the 17 year old driver told officers he was looking down to change the volume on the stereo. Castro says the scariest part — she’s 4 months pregnant.

“You want to protect the baby and you feel so helpless is really the primary feeling of not being able to protect my pregnancy. So ya having that sort of initial terror of helplessness and fear of wanting to protect the pregnancy but not being able to do anything at all. It was horrible, it was horrible. At the scene that’s all I cared about, they were like how’s your body and I was like check the baby. They asked if my neck hurt and I was like check the baby, I didn’t even care about my own personal health and safety as much as I cared about making sure the baby was okay.”

After 8 hours in the hospital, several ultra sounds, she found out the baby was going to be fine, “both ultrasounds reflected that the baby was okay, luckily I’m not far along enough to the baby is still in ambiotic fluid so he just kind of bounced around in there little bit and is okay.”

Now Castro has a message to anyone getting behind the wheel, “I think in our culture it’s so, we’re so responsive when anybody tries to get ahold of us we are right there, and we don’t have to be. It’s okay to put your phone down, it’s okay to just drive and that is what I am asking my family and my community to do to protect each other is to just pay attention. Just look at the road. It’s the most important thing you’re doing while driving and the best thing you can do to protect us all.”

California Highway Patrol Officer, Nicklaus Wells, said he sees distracted driving daily from all ages.

Officer Wells said the signs someone is distracted are pretty obvious most of the time. “One hand’s going to be holding their cell phone, you’re going to see the bright case of their cell phone. You know their eyes aren’t going to be on the road, they’ll be stopped at stop signs for a long period time looking at their phone or stopped at a green light.”

He said the best way to avoid the temptation to pick up your phone, is set up bluetooth in your car or buy a cell phone mount for the dash. “I would look into getting one of those holders. If you have the cell phone in there, than it’s a touch or a swipe, but you can’t be holding it in your hand because that causes a distraction.”

CHP also has classes to educate parents and teens on the impacts of distracted driving. For more information you can click here.