NOVI — A small group of Novi High School students is actively working to educate people on the dangers of distracted driving.
Published February 19, 2025
NOVI — A small group of Novi High School students is actively working to educate people on the dangers of distracted driving.
“Distracted driving is a thing and it can be deadly, and it’s, like, important to know that you should stay focused on roads,” Anushka Atchutuni, 16, said.
Atchutuni, along with three of her classmates, Ruha Komaragiri, 15, Anshika Khanna, 16, and Arya Dungrani, 17, decided to take on the challenge of spreading community awareness on the topic as part of a HOSA — Future Health Professionals project at the school.
Komaragiri and Atchutuni said that although they don’t drive on their own yet, they have noticed poor driving habits.
“As teenagers, there’s a lot of friends that we see just, like, stopping at a stop light and going on their phone for two seconds and, like, not noticing the green light or, like, playing music really loudly that’s almost distracting me as a passenger,” Komaragiri said.
Komaragiri and Atchutuni said the issue affects a wide age range and consequently is important for everyone to be aware of.
In order to find out more about distracted driving, the teens took the time to speak with the Novi Police Department about some of the issues that officers were coming across with distracted driving while on patrol.
“The biggest thing I tried to impress upon them is that anything can wait. It can absolutely wait and it is really going to take your friends and the passengers in your car to realize, hey, it might not seem dangerous in the moment, but it really only takes one time for something really, really bad to happen,” Novi police officer Adam McGee said.
The teens are attempting to spread awareness by handing out flyers and key chains at local stores, holding in-person meetings about the topic for their fellow students after school, and Zoom meetings for those who can’t meet in-person, They have given presentations at a local driving school and are talking to the media and anyone else who will listen.
During their presentations, they have an activity such as coloring a car while focusing on it and then trying to color a car while other distractions are taking place, to show how one’s accuracy can be lowered when not paying attention.
During the Thanksgiving holiday, the teens were able to get more than 100 people to sign a pledge to not drive distracted on the holiday. They are currently working on developing an app to track how many times a driver is distracted to help drivers “be aware of their actions.”
The teens said that many people are unaware of what exactly constitutes distracted driving. They said that many people associate it with talking on the phone, but it is more than that.
“It comes in manual, cognitive and visual. It comes in various forms — pets, foods, live music, conversations in the car; any of those could really take your mind off the road,” Komaragiri said.
The teens said they acquired statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They said that according to the NHTSA, almost 3,000 people are killed every year as a result of distracted driving.
“We emphasize the fact that this is still happening and that it needs to be known to people that you need to stay focused on the road or it could be really detrimental to your well-being,” Komaragiri said.
Atchutuni said that she thinks their work is slowly starting to cause her friends to think twice about distracted driving.
“Our goal is to reach as many people as possible and get the word out that this is a problem now, and you need to be able to face it, and we want to make sure they know what to look out for,’ Komaragiri said. “We want to be sure people are educated on the fact that distracted driving is a real thing.”
During the first stage of their campaign, the teens said they reached more than 20,000 people both locally and internationally. They said they have now doubled that and they plan to reach even more people as the project continues.
Recently the teens held a bake sale at Novi High School and their parents’ worksites to raise money and awareness for End Distracted Driving, an organization that was created after Casey Feldman, 21, of New Jersey, was killed by a distracted driver. Her parents created the organization to prevent other unnecessary deaths, by educating the public. The bake sale raised $200 for the organization, which the teens said they hope to partner with.
The teens said they want to encourage drivers to be more aware of distractions while on the road and for passengers to know that it is OK to speak up. They also suggest that drivers put their phones in “do not disturb” mode so that they won’t be distracted by the various alerts they might otherwise receive, and not to play music at high volume while driving.
As a physical reminder, the teens are handing out keychains to remind drivers to keep their focus on the road. Printed on the key chains are the words, “No text is worth a life.”
For more information, visit their Instagram page @distracteddrivinghosa.
