Your phone lights up! Your whole body fills with excitement. Someone loves you and has decided to engage in a conversation. Your immediate response is to grab your phone and see who texted you. That is perfectly fine while at home. Maybe it’s a text you have been waiting for all day. When it comes to grabbing your phone while driving that’s unacceptable.

Texting while driving is one of my pet peeves. If I am in the car with you, don’t you dare risk my life or yours over a stupid text message because I sure wouldn’t do that to you. If you need to text so bad,  let me have your phone and I will text whoever you need me to.

When you take driver’s training you have to watch videos. Most are instructional, but at the end they show videos of people whose lives  have been lost or harmed due to texting while driving.

For example according to Texting and Driving website “Bailey Goodman, 17, was killed along with four of her fellow cheerleaders when she swerved into oncoming traffic, hit a tractor-trailer and her SUV burst into flames. Five days earlier, the five teenagers had graduated from high school. Two minutes before the crash was reported, her phone was used to send a text greeting to a friend.”

It really happens and there is no reason for it. According to the AT&T website “Those who send text messages while driving are 23 times more likely to be in a crash.” Put your phone in the trunk of your car or the backseat if it’s that tempting. Even the most experienced driver can look away from the road and serve out control.

In the state of Michigan it’s illegal to text and drive.  This means you have to pay a ticket if you get caught. Who wants to do that? I don’t. So if you are lucky enough to text and drive and not hurt someone else or yourself, I hope you get a ticket because it may stop you the next time you go to grab for your phone.