Texting while driving can kill you. That fact hit home recently when University of Northern Colorado student Alex Heit died in a car crash in west Greeley. Police said he lost control of his vehicle while texting and driving.
His untimely death prompted his mother, Sharon Heit, to offer this warning: “Please, vow to never, NEVER text and drive. In a split second, you could ruin your future, injure or kill others and tear a hole in the heart of everyone who loves you.”
Sadly, deaths like Heit’s are not uncommon. An average of 11 teens die every day in car crashes across America because they were texting while driving, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Even when the consequences are not fatal, the numbers are staggering. Texting while driving causes about 1.6 million crashes per year in this country, according to the National Safety Council, and a Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study found that texting while driving results in 330,000 injuries per year.
Drivers mistakenly assume they can text while driving and remain safe but they are risking their lives each time they do it.
Those who text while driving are 23 times more likely to crash than drivers who don’t and six times more likely to cause a crash than drivers who are intoxicated, according to the National Highway Safety Administration.
That’s because they are driving blind. A motorist who takes his eyes off the road for five seconds to text while driving at 55 mph has traveled the length of a football field, according to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
Witnesses said Heit appeared to have his head down and his car began drifting into oncoming traffic. When he looked up, Heit apparently overcorrected by jerking the steering wheel too hard and his vehicle rolled and flipped over.
“Unfortunately, when we think to ourselves, ‘I’ll just do it this one time,’ we are fooling ourselves,” said Greeley police chief Jerry Garner. “This ‘one time’ may be the only time. If this tragic, senseless accident can be a learning experience for others, perhaps others will be saved.”
We certainly hope so. If you text while driving, stop. And if you have loved ones who text while driving, make them promise not to.