Deadly Distractions Part Two

More than 158 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. last year.
What we don't know is how many of them were sent by people behind the wheel of a car.
Highway Safety Officials say more and more wrecks are directly linked to distractions -- like texting and driving.
Some of those accidents are serious... even fatal.

Corinne Wright thumbs through months of paperwork -- doctor's bills, insurance claims, repair-receipts ...
She says it's all the result of an accident earlier this summer -- that's when her car was struck from behind by a 17 year-old driver.
Corinne says he was texting on his phone, and smashed into her hard.
"(He) hit me so hard that I hit the car in front of me. So three cars had damage all together," she says.

A damaged car wasn't all she got -- Corinne suffered a concussion, and also injured an elbow, hand, leg, and shoulder.
Her spine still hurts, there are headaches, and recurring vertigo.
"A few seconds of this kind of behavior is going to cause you weeks... months of problems later on," she says.

Corinne says she already had strong opinions about texting while driving, but the accident motivated her to speak out.
She wrote a letter to the Tennessean, denouncing cell phone use while driving, and calling for a statewide ban on texting while driving.

"A lot of things could be prevented by doing away with using cell phones or text-messaging," Corinne says.

Perhaps 18 year-old Matthew Partington's death could have been one of them.
His mother, Teresa Bleigh says, "He was a very stubborn child, but he was also the best person in the world."

Teresa often tangled with her son about his text-messaging while driving. She believes it may have cost him his life.

A few times, she caught him out on the roads doing it. She would scold him -- he would promise to quit, "and that might last two weeks, and then he'd be back at it again," she says.

This past April, Matthew was in his car with two friends speeding. Teresa believes he was distracted on his phone.
He lost control, "and then by the time he had just about regained control, it was too late because there was a truck coming the other way. And they hit. The impact was so hard that Matt's driver's door was embedded in the grill of that truck. And then the car caught fire."

Matthew Partington and his two friends died in the blaze.
His cell phone was never recovered.
His mother says, "it's a living hell."

Six months later, Teresa Bleigh is still coping with her son's death.
She's joined TDOT's "Get in the Zone" program, educating high schoolers on the dangers of distracted driving.

"They don't need to be goofing around, they need to be paying attention because they're responsible."
Teresa hopes her story of loss can serve a purpose... save a life.
"If i can get through to just one of them, just one of them, then i didn't lose Matthew for no reason."