Teens Create Device to Stop Texting and Driving | Seattle Car Accident Attorney

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Being a Bellevue personal injury lawyer and a Seattle car accident attorney I am always astounded by how difficult it is to make drivers realize they are not invincible. What is even more astounding is that at times children seem to show more cautious and proactive behavior than adults- such as a group of middle schoolers who recently joined the cause to promote greater traffic safety.

In a national competition sponsored by the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation four Philadelphia middle schoolers will be competing with an invention built to increase traffic safety by putting an end to distracted driving.

The team composed of 4 girls; Alyssa Sullivan, Isabella DeLuca, Sara Rowlands, and Elizabeth Sauers, started with a survey to discover how deep the texting and driving problem lay in society. They discovered that out of the 763 16-18 year olds surveyed 57% admitted to texting and driving and 23% confirmed that their parents were also guilty. These results proved the problem to be a great enough risk for the girls to work on a possible solution.

After 7 months of intense brainstorming and a considerable amount of hard work the group revealed a device to help stop texting and driving. The TEXTerminator, which was designed with the assistance of engineers from Subaru, uses electronic signaling to block a phones texting feature. The girls will compete against 6 other groups at the competition with the grand prize opportunity of $25,000 to help seed the creation of the device.

This group of girls shows that if we put our heads together we can come up with viable solutions to decrease distracted driving. Statistics show that 80% of auto accidents are caused by distracted drivers and 27% alone from texting while driving. Half the battle is making society realize how dangerous the behavior is. Teens Against Distracted Driving was founded to help teenagers realize the dangers of texting and driving- by taking a simple pledge to not utilize a cell phone while driving we can take a significant step towards greater safety for all drivers until the TEXTerminator is readily available.