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British teens make gory texting-while-driving video

A video made by British high school students serves as a PSA on the perils of texting while driving.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
Wayne Cunningham

A story on NPR covered this British high-school-produced public service announcement on the perils of texting while driving. The video shows the gory aftermath of an accident caused by text-messaging distraction, and makes it clear that people other than the texter suffered the most. According to the NPR story, only 14 of the United States have outlawed texting while driving. And while many people who do text while driving will probably ignore statistics and videos like this one, it at least might get the attention of more state lawmakers.

The problem is partially that we have trained ourselves, like Pavlov's dog, to respond to the buzzing and beepings of our cell phones, and it seems hard to resist the urge to glance at the screen when a text comes in. But it shouldn't take much of an act of will power to wait, and read the text when the car is parked. People who can't handle that wait are most likely just insecure, afraid that their friends will disown them if they don't respond to text messages immediately.