Distracted Driving Essay

A PSA helps reduce the number of distracted driving incidents by showing people that they should be safe when driving, so they won’t text and drive. It can be said that people don’t watch or listen to them, so they don’t really have much effect, but there are multiple reasons why they are affective. There have been many deaths due to people texting while driving. Texting and driving causes people to not pay attention to the road, leading to more accidents. Public Service Announcements show people the effects of texting while driving, which can lead to an awareness that causes people to not want to text and drive, which will lessen the amount of deaths from distracted driving. PSAs achieve this through using rhetorical devices. Pathos can be used to use people’s emotions at the sight of the effects of texting and driving, and logos can be used to show facts on the effects of texting and driving. These are what cause PSAs to be so affective in stopping this texting and driving, leading to a better, safer road to drive on.
Distracted driving is when the driver is not focused solely on the road, so essentially something is distracting them from their driving.
Distractions taking the focus from the driver can be a very dangerous thing, even leading to death if it causes accidents. It is actually shown that distracted driving is a major cause of deaths. A statistic shows that every day, 9 people are killed due to accidents caused by distracted driving (“Distracted Driving | Parkview Health”). A prevention of distracted driving would be a Public Service Announcement, which is a public awareness campaign that informs the public on issues such as health and
safety.
A PSA helps reduce the number of distracted driving incidents by making people aware of the effects of distracted driving, and just how harmful distracted driving can be. An example of a PSA against distracted driving would be the glee campaign that showed a girl getting causing an accident from taking her eyes off the road to reply to a text message ("Distracted Driving | Glee Campaign | Texting and Driving”). This campaign uses pathos, because it shows an accident actually occurring from the distracted driving, which will tap into emotions. Pathos is a very strong rhetorical device in campaigns because people react strongly to their emotions and what their emotions want them to do.
There is an argument, however, against PSAs. People argue that barely anybody actually watches the PSAs, so they have no real effect on the community. There might be minimal effect over a short period of time from this happening, but there will be a gradual decrease in distracted driving incidents from PSAs. There are many programs now that are very informing of the effects of distracted driving, such as “Don’t Text and Drive” and “Don’t Drink and Drive” that will make many people aware of the dangers of distracted driving (“Distracted Driving | Parkview Health”). Also, some people do actually watch these PSAs. As mentioned before, the effects of the PSAs will help reduce the number of distracted driving incidents through different rhetorical devices, such as pathos, which will cause these people to no longer be a part of the problem of distracted driving.
To summarize, PSAs greatly help reduce the amount of distracted driving incidents by making people aware of the dangers of distracted driving and therefore causing less distracted driving. People have argued that not many people see these PSAs, but with the amount of people that do, and with the great effect of these PSAs, there is still a great reduce in the amount of distracted driving incidents from the PSAs. PSAs receive their effect from the use of rhetorical devices in the campaigns and just a general increase in awareness of the effects of distracted driving. This definitely reduces the amount of people that drive while distracted, showing that PSAs are affective in lessening the amount of distracted driving incidents.