There’s a lie we tell ourselves about distracted driving.
It sounds like this: I’m the only one in my car. If I mess up, I’m the only one who gets hurt.
That lie is killing people.
Distracted driving is not a private decision. It’s not a victimless gamble. It’s not about personal freedom or convenience or squeezing in one more text at a red light. When you choose to look down at your phone behind the wheel, you’re making a decision for everyone around you, whether they agreed to it or not.
Kids on sidewalks don’t get a vote.
Single moms driving the only car they own don’t get a vote.
Police officers standing on traffic stops don’t get a vote.
Family pets crossing the street don’t get a vote.
They just pay the price.
From January 17 through January 31, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol is conducting a statewide special emphasis on distracted driving. This effort isn’t random, and it isn’t about writing tickets for the sake of it. It’s dedicated to Trooper Nicholas Dees, who was killed by a distracted driver on January 31, 2015. This year marks the 11th anniversary of his death.
Trooper Dees and Trooper Keith Burch were investigating a collision involving a tractortrailer on Interstate 40 in Seminole County, near the Pottawatomie County line. Their patrol cars were parked with warning lights on. The scene was visible. It was marked. It should have been safe.
It wasn’t.
A driver failed to yield to those flashing lights and drove directly into the collision scene, striking both troopers. Trooper Dees was killed instantly. Trooper Burch suffered serious injuries and later retired.
Phone records showed the driver had been sending and receiving messages in the miles leading up to the crash.
Let that sink in.
This wasn’t bad weather. It wasn’t an unavoidable mechanical failure. It wasn’t fate. It was a phone. A distraction. A choice that didn’t just affect the person holding it.
The driver, Steven Wayne Clark, was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and served five years in prison. Five years for a life taken. Five years for a family changed forever. He has completed probation and is now free.
Trooper Dees is not.
His death led to the passage of the “Trooper Nicholas Dees and Trooper Keith Burch Act of 2015,” which made it illegal in Oklahoma to manually compose, send, or read text messages on a handheld electronic device while driving. The law exists because the danger is real, proven, and deadly.
Yet here we are, more than a decade later, still pretending distracted driving is no big deal.
We see it every day. Heads down at stoplights. Phones glowing at 80 miles an hour. Drivers drifting over center lines. Near-misses in school zones. Brake lights flaring at the last second because someone was scrolling instead of watching the road.
And when people get called out, the excuses roll in.
“I was just checking something real quick.”
“I didn’t think anyone was around.”
“I’ve done it a hundred times.”
That’s the problem. Distracted drivers think they’re special. They think the rules of physics, probability, and consequence don’t apply to them.
That belief is selfish. And it’s dangerous.
Distracted drivers don’t just hurt themselves. They plow into stopped traffic at intersections and change a routine commute into months of hospital visits and missed paychecks. They drift across center lines and hit oncoming cars carrying families headed home for dinner. They barrel through construction zones and crash into workers who are supposed to be protected by cones and flashing lights. They tear through neighborhoods and yards, destroying fences, mailboxes, and lives that were never anywhere near the roadway. And when it happens, the damage can’t be undone with apologies or explanations.
During the last two weeks of January, Oklahoma troopers, along with other law enforcement agencies, will be focusing daily enforcement on distracted driving laws. That means more stops, more citations, and less tolerance for excuses.
Good.
Because enforcement isn’t about punishment. It’s about prevention. It’s about making people look up, put the phone down, and remember that driving is not a background activity. It requires your full, undivided attention. Lives depend on it.
Trooper Nicholas Dees didn’t die because someone was malicious. He died because someone was careless and selfish, because someone couldn’t wait to send or read a message. Distracted driving isn’t about you. It never was.
So get your head out of your phone. Get your head out of your excuses. And for the sake of everyone who didn’t sign up to share the road with your distraction, drive like the people around you matter.
Be kind to your neighbors, Be kind to your pets, Get off the phone when you’re behind the wheel.