Parents, are you setting a bad example by texting while driving? Are your teenagers witnessing you perform this risky maneuver? If so, you are setting them up for tragic, perhaps fatal accidents. Teenagers learn from their parents’ actions more than their lectures, so it is up to you to set a good example. Granted, adults often text in order to catch up with their hectic work schedules, whereas teens tend to text as a means of social interaction. This distinction is meaningless if your child is killed while texting and driving.
Here is one example from our files. A teenage boy, let’s call him Joey, has a father who runs a very successful hedge fund. Naturally, the father has bought Joey a flashy sports car and the latest cell phone. The father is wealthy, and just wants to share the wealth with his family. Unfortunately, Joey has developed some bad habits: texting while driving and crack cocaine. In order to support his expensive habit, Joey steals the hedge fund client list from his father’s office. He is driving his car and texting to other hedge fund traders, trying to sell leads to them. The client list is very valuable, and Joey is fully absorbed in his business transaction when he broadsides a school bus that “came out of nowhere”. Luckily, Joey’s car had 12 airbags that saved his life. Too bad the bus driver wasn’t so lucky.
When questioned at the hospital as to what happened, Joey first made up a story about falling asleep at the wheel. However, investigators were able to ascertain that in fact Joey was on his cell phone, texting away when he hit the bus. By tracing his phone messages, detectives were able to piece together the pattern of phone calls Joey had been making. When confronted with the facts, Joey broke down and confessed that he was a crack addict with a $500/day habit. In his own defense, he proudly pointed out that the information he stole was from his own family, so that “outsiders” weren’t victimized. Obviously, Joey’s crack addiction had affected his mental facilities, and he was willing to say or do anything to get his next fix. Joey’s father was able to negotiate a plea deal and send Joey to a rehabilitation facility in the south of France, where at last report Joey was doing well.
These kinds of tragedies play out every day for drivers who text. While the story had a happy ending for Joey, the bus driver left behind a family of four to fend for itself. So, when it comes to texting while driving, the moral is: there are no happy endings.