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Brianna Jordan got behind the wheel Oct. 21, glancing back and forth between the road and her cell phone as she texted a friend.
Then she wrecked.
Fortunately, the golf cart she was driving while sitting beside an N.C. state trooper simply wrecked into orange cones. But she learned a lesson on the danger of texting while driving.
The "dnt txt & drv" program - that's "don't text and drive" in text lingo - led by a group of state highway patrol troopers, recently went to several area high schools to warn students about texting while driving.
Jordan hit about 15 cones on her way through the course set up by the troopers.
"I thought I was going to be able to do it," said Jordan, a Mount Pleasant High School senior. "It was really hard."
Lt. Doug Hayes of Mocksville began the program at the beginning of the school year. Motivated by concern for his 14-year-old daughter, who just started high school and driver's education, he created the program to reach out to young drivers.
"We can tell teenagers all day not to do something," Hayes said. "They really need to see for themselves."
Students took turns driving a golf cart through a winding obstacle course lined with traffic cones. Each student drove through once without texting, and then troopers rode alongside them as they drove the course again while attempting to read a text message with a question sent by a classmate and reply without knocking over the cones.
"I don't think I could ever trust myself to text and drive," Jenna Siffringer, a junior at Cox Mill High School, said after she finished the course Thursday. "It was definitely hard to focus."
Students laughed as they watched classmates drive erratically, crushing cones and running a stop sign placed in the course.
"Now, if they're on the highway doing that, it could be fatal," said Sgt. Henry King.
Mount Pleasant High School Principal Edie Sayewich said many teenagers don't take their responsibility as drivers as seriously as they should.
"I have buried too many students," she told students.
About half of adolescents text-message while driving, which increases the risk of car accidents by up to 23 times, according to recent research by the National Center for Children in Poverty.
It's illegal for drivers ages 16-18 to use cell phones while driving in North Carolina, and texting while driving will be illegal for all North Carolinians beginning Dec. 1.
Hayes admitted the new law will be difficult to enforce. That's why he hopes troopers can persuade teenagers that texting isn't worth risking a car accident.
State troopers have traveled to about 20 N.C. high schools. They brought the program to Northwest Cabarrus High School and Central Cabarrus High in October.
The patrolmen also show students a short, emotional video that shows a re-enactment of a fatal car accident caused by a girl who texted while she drove in England. The video showed the bloodied girl screaming for help after she got distracted by a text message and ran into an oncoming car, killing her two passengers and members of a family in the other car.
"We're not up here preaching just to be preaching," said Trooper Glenn Smith. "It's going to happen."
Troopers told students the scenario isn't as uncommon as they might think. They pointed to a wreck in September that killed 16-year-old East Gaston High School junior Brittany Johnson of Stanley. Her cell phone was found with an unfinished text message to her mother.
"No text is so important they can't wait five or 10 minutes to read it," Hayes said.
