Video: FocusDriven.org: Death by Cell Phone. If You Care, We Can Make a Difference.
Orange cones were the victims at a recent texting-and-driving program at Mount Pleasant, N.C., High School.
Brianna Jordan got behind the wheel, glancing back and forth between the road and her cell phone as she texted a friend.
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Then she wrecked.
Fortunately, the golf cart she was driving while sitting beside a North Carolina state trooper simply wrecked into orange cones. But she learned a lesson on the danger of texting while driving.
The "dnt txt & drv" program - that's "don't text and drive" in text lingo - led by a group of state highway patrol troopers, went to several Charlotte-area high schools last fall to warn students about texting while driving.
Jordan hit about 15 cones on her way through the course set up by the troopers.
"I thought I was going to be able to do it," said Jordan, a Mount Pleasant senior. "It was really hard."
About half of adolescents text-message while driving, which increases the risk of car accidents by up to 23 times, according to recent research by the National Center for Children in Poverty.
Motivated by concern for his 14-year-old daughter, Lt. Doug Hayes of Mocksville, N.C., created the program to reach out to young drivers.
"We can tell teenagers all day not to do something," Hayes said. "They really need to see for themselves."
Students took turns driving a golf cart through a winding obstacle course lined with traffic cones. Each student drove through once without texting, and then troopers rode alongside them as they drove the course again while attempting to read a text message with a question sent by a classmate and reply without knocking over the cones.
"I don't think I could ever trust myself to text and drive," Jenna Siffringer, a junior at Cox Mill High School, said after she finished the course. "It was definitely hard to focus."
Students laughed as they watched classmates drive erratically, crushing cones and running a stop sign placed in the course.
"Now, if they're on the highway doing that, it could be fatal," said Sgt. Henry King.
The patrolmen also show students a short, emotional video that shows a re-enactment of a fatal car accident caused by a girl who texted while she drove in England. The video showed the bloodied girl screaming for help after she got distracted by a text message and ran into an oncoming car, killing her two passengers and members of a family in the other car.
"No text is so important they can't wait five or 10 minutes to read it," Hayes said.
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