Texting and driving like playing Russian roulette

editors-blog-entry3Imagine losing a loved one or a friend in a car accident caused by someone else who was texting/surfing while driving. Imagine being severely injured by such a driver — and losing all of your life savings to medical bills you never expected you’d have to pay that resulted from someone else’s irresponsibility and selfishness.

That’s what happened to people interviewed for this powerful video segment (see video embedded at top of this entry) on Rock Center with Brian Williams about the texting/surfing while driving epidemic. Its an epidemic that’s killing thousands of people and injuring hundreds of thousands every year in the United States.

Sadly, this epidemic isn’t going to go away any time soon thanks to the fact that change is going to require, as NBC reporter Kate Snow notes at the end, a “change in culture” — meaning a sea change such that texting/surfing drivers who kill and/or injure others are given the same hard sentences that drunk drivers get.

I hope this happens sooner rather than later so that fewer people end up dying due to a growing problem — deaths by car accident are again on their way up after a long period of decline in the U.S. It’s a serious problem that one day could very easily take my life — or yours.

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