Cooper Hurley Announces the Winner of its National Distracted Driving Awareness Scholarship

Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers is delighted to announce the winner of its National Distracted Driving Awareness Scholarship. The firm has awarded $2,000 to Elyse Colihan from Roseville, Minnesota for her studies. The judges were impressed with her presentation on how to address distracted driving, one of the most serious menaces facing young drivers on the roads of the United States today.

Elyse Colihan graduated high school in May after four busy years of debate and speech team, AP classes, an internship at an aerospace engineering company, and volunteer work at the Minnesota Children’s Museum.

She also had the opportunity to learn Arabic.  She teaches at Concordia Language Villages over the summer months.

“I’ll be attending DePaul University next year and I couldn’t be more proud and thankful to be supported by Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers. As texting while driving is possibly my biggest pet peeve, this is a mission I’m already passionate about and am excited that my essay resonated with those at the firm,” Elyse wrote.

Elyse will be studying Computer Science at DePaul University. She said computer science is a subject she has been passionate about ever since she took an intro to coding class during her sophomore year.

“The plethora of things I can create and problems I can solve excites me more than I can possibly express. My current goal is to create a language learning program built around Arabic – which combines both my passion for coding, and language,” she said. “It’s not something that’s been done very well in the past, and most programs focus on formal Arabic which isn’t used colloquially. I think learning Arabic is extremely important both in our communities and abroad, which is why I hope to use my degree to help others get started.”

In her essay, Elyse looked at the threats posed by cellphones to teen drivers as well as hands-free technology.

“Hands-Free” cell phone laws – which prohibit the use of smartphones outside of voice-command, are proving to be the best way to address the distracted driving epidemic,” she wrote.

“Reports coming out of Texas and Georgia show differing outcomes from these laws. In Georgia, distracted-driving overall has fallen an astounding 21% from where it was before the law took effect. In Texas, however, not only did the law have no significant impact on distracted driving, collisions increased overall after its implementation. Ultimately it’s hard to say if these laws definitively work or not with normal enforcement measures, such as police traffic stops. We should look to other countries who have used alternative measures – like traffic cameras – to enforce them.”

Elyse drew on a wealth of reports to reach her conclusions including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) National Center for Statistics and Analysis, and a study using detection cameras in Saudi Arabia.

Reach Out to a Virginia Beach Distracted Driving Lawyer to Learn More

Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers set up a national distracted driving awareness scholarship in 2019 to complement the local competition that was initiated the previous year. We are always looking to reinforce the distracted driving message as well as helping young people. We congratulate Elyse Colihan for her hard work and wish her well.

Find out more about distracted driving in Virginia and the Distracted Driving Awareness Scholarship on our website or call us.