Is a text really worth a life?

The answer is easy, No!

In recent years, texting while driving has become a serious problem for every driver and passenger. In 2011 about 23 percent of car accidents were related to phone use. That’s over 1.3 million accidents.

In 2014, there have been many cases and people have even shared their experiences. Just one story involved a woman from Belmont, who caused an accident leading to the death of another person. There’s another story with a young girl named Liz who now can’t see through one eye, can’t smell, can’t hear very well and can no longer go to sleep without medication. There are so many more of these tragedy stories because people made the irresponsible decision to read or write a text while in control of a two ton car.

Celebrities and major companies have banded together over the years to form pledges and campaigns to encourage people not to text and drive. This includes, “The Voice” Adam Levine and Nissan who together have the Red Thumb Campaign, as well as Demi Lovato with the #X campaign, and the “It Can Wait” campaign by AT&T. These all have ranked up many pledges. In fact the “It Can Wait” campaign has 5,973,986 and counting. The Red Thumb is striving for 1,000,000 drivers to take their pledge.

This is all in hope of preventing accidents. Texting while driving was estimated to be involved in more than 200,000 vehicle crashes in 2012, often involving injuries and deaths. Last year, AT&T worked with acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog to make a powerful documentary and national advertisements featuring real stories of lives that were affected and even ended because of texting while driving.

“Like, when my mom is texting sometimes I get scared because like we could be on the freeway but also like sometimes I don’t because she can multitask,” passenger Deijah Bernard said.

This is another aspect to the problem because people have started to accept it but it’s not safe, considering all it takes is a few seconds for an accident to occur.

“I don’t really feel anything when my mom does it because like, I’m used to it,” passenger Makeila May said.

No one should ever feel the slightest bit of comfort when their driver is texting because if a person’s texting then that person’s not driving.