Texting While Driving #1 Killer of Teens in America

Texting while driving is one of those things that many people claim ‘not to do’ when, in fact, it happens all too frequently. There seems to be a good amount of denial at work among drivers of all ages.

We know the dangers of distracted driving, yet many will at least steal a glance at an an incoming message while flying down the highway, while others engage in full blown text exchanges. Unfortunately, while many claim to ‘not text while driving’ the practice has become the leading cause of car accidents and the #1 killer of teens in America.

You don’t have to wait long for the ‘phenomena of denial’ surrounding texting while driving to appear in yet another news report:

• Monday, a Des Moines bus driver was fired after a student videotaped her texting while driving a school bus occupied by students. In response the driver stated “I acknowledge that’s [texting] something dangerous, but that’s not something I do”.
• In a tragic twist of “learned my lesson”, a California teen, who narrowly escaped death after running a stop sign in a distracted driving accident in high school, was killed in a motor vehicle accident a year later after she ran her car off an overpass because she was texting while driving despite her pledge to “put her phone away.”

Texting while driving is perhaps one of the riskiest activities that can lead to car wrecks and so far the measures taken against it are not altogether effective. A good first step would be to acknowledge ‘doing it’ in the first place.
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Sources: KCCI.com, Bus Driver Fired for Texting While Driving Speaks Out”, by Mark Tauscheck, May 18, 2016.; The Charlotte Observer, “She Survived Her First driving-while-texting Accident – But Not Her Second”, accessed May 18, 2016.;