ROANOKE RAPIDS — Roanoke Rapids High School students Jessica Robinson, Ashton Jordan and Jaime Pearcey, as part of their membership in DECA, thought putting on a demonstration illustrating the dangers of driving while texting would be a good idea. Their faculty advisor, Jan Tugwell, phoned a Roanoke Rapids High School graduate at the State Police Highway Patrol and the idea came to fruition.

Roger Bell | The Daily Herald North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper Tommy L. Davis rides along for safety as Roanoke Rapids High School student Tim Austin tries to avoid knocking over the pylons while driving and texting. This exercise was part of a demonstration of the dangers of texting while driving at the school Wednesday. Advertisement

Wednesday afternoon pylons dotted the parking lot across the street from Roanoke Rapids High School and students attempted to navigate the course in an electric golf cart while text messaging on their cell phones. While many found the results humorous, the state police in attendance felt the fun underscored a serious lesson.

“The mistakes you make here,” said North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper D.W. Green, “are the mistakes we want you to only make here.”

As students attempted to steer the course, nearly all of them knocked down pylons and went off course as they tried to send and receive texts from students attending the demonstration. Robinson hopes the lesson — driving while texting is very dangerous — got through to the students.

“I have friends who have gotten in wrecks because of texting while driving,” Robinson said. “You could lose your life,” Jordan added, “I’d hate to lose my life over a cell phone.”

Highway Patrol First Sgt. J.A. Cameron, a graduate of Roanoke Rapids High School, feels programs such as these are a good way to get messages to students. “We want to be pro-active,” Cameron said. “Anything that takes away from driving is a hazard.”

After the demonstration, Trooper D.W. Green, of the Highway Patrol, took the students inside and showed them a video dramatization of a wreck caused by texting. In the accident, a teenage girl texts while driving and has a collision which kills her friends in the car with her and kills three members of a family in another car, one of them an infant. It’s a grisly example of what can happen.

Green also showed the students numbers designed to illustrate the point.  Among them, 46% of teens text while driving, reaction times of participants in a study were 35% slower when writing or texting - reaction times of teens at the legal alcohol limit are 12% slower - and steering control worsened 91% for drivers distracted by texts.

The presentation’s timing also worked out well. On Dec. 1, state law will require drivers to either pull over or stop before text messaging or e-mailing. Fines could be $100 plus court costs, which Trooper Green said could be as high as $131. 

But the costs of driving while texting could be much higher than fines and court costs, as Green told the students. “It can cost you not only in injury or your life,” Green said, “but it can also cost you civilly.”

“I hope everyone understands you need to do whatever you can to be safe,” Robinson said. She also hoped the teens would remember the project’s campaign, which all three students said together:

“Stay alive, don’t text and drive!”