Deadly Distractions Part One

The government estimates one out of every three car crashes is caused by driver distraction.

It can be everything from talking on a cell phone to reading a paper or fiddling with the radio.

Now, there's a relatively new and growing distraction - "text-messaging" behind the wheel.

It's especially popular among teenagers - our youngest and most inexperienced drivers.

FOX 17 News takes a look at why it puts them - and you - in danger in our special report "DEADLY DISTRACTIONS."

18 year-old Brandon Dyer is your typical teenager.

He's got a car he loves, and he has friends who he stays in constant contact with - usually by texting them on his phone while driving.

"Yeah, you could pull over, but it's wasting time to some people. It's like you could be driving down the interstate texting, or you could pull over - lose 2 or 3 minutes - and text," says Dyer.

Brandon isn't alone: in a July 2007 survey conducted by AAA and Seventeen Magazine... almost a third of teens surveyed admit texting while driving.

In a separate Nationwide Mutual Insurance Study, one in five of all drivers questioned admitted to the same.

Maybe you are one of them; don't think Highway Patrol Troopers are missing it.

Captain Chip Miller says, "We are seeing this, yes. I know I drive, of course every day, coming in from out west and coming in on I-40, I see it every day."

But so far in Tennessee, there's no statewide ban on texting and driving.
Only Washington state has passed such a law, after a survey there found distracted drivers accounted for more than 35-hundred accidents in the first nine months of 2006.
Beginning in January 2008... DWT -- or driving while texting -- will land Washington drivers a 101-dollar fine.

But here in Tennessee, only our youngest drivers are barred from texting and driving. As part of the state's graduated driver's license program, drivers under 18 are prohibited from using cell phones while driving -- but that doesn't mean they don't.
Kendell Poole, director of the Governor's Highway Safety Office, says, "It's so difficult to enforce, but parents are the real key to this."
Poole says parents influence kids' behavior... one way or another.
"Right now, I don't think that we, as adults, are being very good role models, ourselves," says Poole.

Brandon Dyer's mother, Jenny says her son's constant texting and driving is partly her fault.
She, herself, text-messages him while driving.
Recently, it even led to a near-accident for her.
"I was texting my son and looked up and i drifted off onto the shoulder of the road a little bit," she says.

Jenny isn't as concerned about her texting and driving as she is about Brandon doing the same thing. It's because he's only been driving for a couple of years. She worries he could be in a wreck if he's texting and driving.

"Him looking down and missing a red light and going through it and somebody just taking him out in that intersection... to me, i think it's just as dangerous as drinking and driving," Jenny Dyer says.

Teens like Brandon say they know the risks ...
A 2006 survey by Liberty Mutual Insurance found about one in three teenage drivers consider texting behind the wheel to be very distracting.
Brandon admits he's one of them. He says he's even had close calls. "It does happen occasionally. Once, twice, or more a week."

Brandon also recognizes the odds aren't in his favor.
"It's gonna happen to everybody - it could, i mean if you do it every day. Something's going to wind up happening to you."