High School Student Takes On Texting and Driving

Being a relatively new driver, I find myself getting nervous at certain times behind the wheel. I myself have been in a car accident when no phone use, drinking, drugs or other distractions were involved.

My drivers' education instructor told me that being in a car is the most dangerous thing he does every day. The fact that people of all ages increase the risk of an accident by texting and driving is astounding to me. I do admit that before my accident, I did text and drive a few times, but I promised myself that I would never do it again, out of fear and out of realization.

The idea to start a no texting and driving campaign came to me in a random way, but clearly affected me enough to bring the idea to my school.

One night I sat down and watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with my mom. The episode was about a family (the Browns) that lost their teenage daughter in a car accident because she was texting while driving. Watching this episode, my heart was breaking, listening to how her parents and younger sister were affected by her death.

The Brown family created a group called the Alex Brown Foundation in memory of their daughter. This foundation includes a pledge that they get people to take not to text and drive. The tragic event of losing their daughter caused the Browns to dedicate their lives to informing people about the dangers of texting while driving, as well as trying to get as many people as possible to take the pledge.

After proposing the idea of having students take the pledge to my school principal, I started research on the topic and found way more than I ever expected. Shocking facts and statistics made me even more determined to get my fellow classmates to pledge never to put their lives at risk by using their phones while driving.

Using the color orange to advertise and represent our cause, members of SADD and myself started to spread the word that we would be doing a presentation in all of the gym classes. We showed a 10-minute video that portrayed the possible consequences of the simple act of looking at a phone while on the road. We explained to the best of our ability how careless and dangerous texting while driving is and afterwards gave students the opportunity to sign a pledge and get orange ribbons around their thumbs to remind them of the oath that they took. Seeing how many people were willing to sign the pledge was overwhelming and made me so unbelievably happy.

We hung up all of the pledges in our school cafeteria and the papers filled two walls. This issue has become something that is so important to me. I worked really hard to make the campaign work and it was a huge success. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of Ms. (Denise) Zumpano and Mr. (Damon) O’Keefe.

I really hope that with our campaign we got the message out to people that it takes only three seconds to completely change a life forever, or even end one. If we managed to save even one life then all of this is worth it. I hope that other schools like Pearl River will also care enough to make students aware of the dangers of texting while driving before a tragedy like the death of Alex Brown occurs.

Pearl River High School junior Christiane Hennessy, 17, brought the idea of a campaign against texting and driving to her teachers, then worked with other members of SADD at the school to make it happen.

"The response by the kids was really terrific," said Pearl River Superintendent of Schools Dr. Frank Auriemma. "I think they can really see the dangers of it. I don’t know if we can all appreciate the degree to which kids text on a day-to-day basis and too many of them do it while they are driving."

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