 You know, there's no sugarcoating it, you know, as to what happened to me. It's eye-opening. You don't realize that moment. Your whole life can change. Then in the blink of an eye, I am a 22-year-old woman who has a disability and I have no idea what that really meant for my life. So it completely changed everything. Coming home from a friend's house. I didn't think that I was going to end up where I was that night. You never really think about things like that until it happens to you. You really don't think that you hear about it, but you don't think that's going to be your life and your story until it is. A late night ride with a friend turned into a traumatic incident and my life changed forever. In my case, my friend, she was just tired and she fell asleep at the wheel because I didn't have my seatbelt on. As the car flipped over, I just rode around in the car. So I actually have a T4 T5 impact fracture and basically I'm paralyzed from my breast bone down. My friend, that was in the backseat with me and she died instantly. My friend was the driver and he ended up losing control of the vehicle and I was ejected from the vehicle while I fractured my C4 vertebrae and my spine, left me with paralysis from biceps down. And I remember just waking up in the hospital and the doctor telling me that your friend, he's doing well, but he was under the influence of alcohol. I am now right above Neamputee due to distracted driving. The gentleman had T-boned me and unfortunately I had lost my leg at the scene. It was because someone else, you know, someone made that decision for me. Shock trauma sees almost 7,000 patients a year. A huge proportion of which are motor vehicle collisions, a huge proportion of which can be attributed to some form of distracted driving and it can change life in an instant and it can end life in an instant. A big part of trauma prevention is bringing awareness to the seriousness and reality of certain behaviors such as distracted driving, how much just looking at a text could impact somebody's life. Well, it's hard because I am reminded every day that, you know, of my accident and my situation, I wake up and put my prosthetic on. I was going to school to study physical therapy and now I need physical therapy and, you know, my life changed and I have to figure out how to do things I need in different ways. Can't prevent floods, you can't prevent landslides, you can't prevent lightning strikes, but the majority of automobile collisions, you can potentially have a root cause that is preventable. It just takes a split second for, you know, things to get out of control. So you definitely have to pay attention. Even if you yourself are not a distracted driver, it's always good to be aware of your surrounding. I see people texting and driving and there's some kind of warning signs you can look when you're approaching a car, the changes in speed, somebody slows down for an unexpected reason and then they speed up and then they slow down. You never know the impact of how your life can change when you walk out the front door, especially when you get behind the wheel of a vehicle because there's so many people who drive around are distracted on a daily basis and you could be one of those people and driving under the influence of alcohol is a big distraction as well because it takes away your thought process to be able to control a vehicle. There are so many things I would have just, you know, wanted to change about that situation and it's just, it's really just not worth it. Whoever calls, whatever text you get, just wait, wait for you to stop, wait for you to get out of the car because, you know, you could think that, alright, I'll look at that text 10 seconds, but you have to be fully present behind the wheel and it's just, it's not worth you playing Russian roulette with your life and definitely not worth you playing Russian roulette with someone else's. Anything that pulls your attention, even for a couple seconds, putting on chapstick, reaching over into your purse, even food, eating can be distracting, cell phones, cell phones are the biggest. I know we have a lot of new technology with Hands Free and I just wish people would use Hands Free and just pay attention to the road. Your only focus should be on the road, the people around you, nothing else. I see it all the time, like a lot of people say, if you can do things over again, would you change it? You know, some people say, nah, they won't change it. But I think about that. Like, you know, if I can do this again, of course I'll change it. But you know, I realize like, at the same time, look how many people I have inspired along the way, look how many lives I don't change, even though my life has changed. The only person you can control is you. You know, you have to be the one that's paying attention for yourself and maybe for someone else. The person who's focused on driving should focus on the driving, cherish that thought, value the responsibility. You know, multitasking may be okay when you're sitting at a desk, but it's not okay when you're operating the vehicle. I just want to let everyone know that driving is a great, it's freeing and you know, it's your start of adulthood, you're able to go do things on your own. It feels great, but you also have a huge responsibility for yourself and for everyone else on the road. It's not just get in your car and I'm just going to go. It's paying attention, being aware, understanding cars are dangerous. They're massive machines that are dangerous and I just want people to think twice before they pick up their phone to answer that text or dig down into their glove box to grab that chapstick. It just, it can wait. You know, it's a responsibility that you're taking and you know, you're going to, if you're distracted, there's a possibility that you're going to hurt someone else, not yourself and change someone else's life and you don't want that, you don't want that when you're conscious for the rest of your life. I bring people back from the brink and I have the ability to do that, but I can't repair their lives entirely and it's an instant, it's an absolute instant that it can change and it can change at any time in a distracted driving situation.