Aug 18, 2009 11:37 am US/Central
Teenage Drivers Learn Dangers Of Texting
High School Students Head To Soldier Field For Allstate Distracted Driving Challenge
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Teenage drivers learn the perils of texting and driving at the Allstate Distracted Driving Challenge in the parking lot of Soldier Field.
CBS
Teenage drivers headed to Soldier Field on Tuesday, where they learned a tough lesson about what not to do behind the wheel.
As CBS 2's Susan Carlson reports, the Allstate Districted Driving Challenge was underway at Soldier Field at 11 a.m. A handful of Chicago are high school students are participating, and they are getting a wakeup call that could save their lives.
The lesson was about texting behind the wheel.
The challenge was for teenage drivers to face their distractions head-on. When the teenage drivers were focused on the slalom course set up in the Soldier Field parking lot, they had little difficulty. But when they were reading text message behind the wheel, they were running over traffic cones left and right.
"It was definitely a lot harder, because we had to pick up the pace, and then you also had to read and look ahead at the same time," said 16-year-old driver Andrew Adcock. "It's definitely not something that you can do."
The teens were honest enough to admit they text while driving, but now they will need to put the brakes on that behavior. Assistant Police Supt. Beatrice Cuello explained why texting and driving is dangerous for drivers.
"If they're distracted, they're not able to react, say, if someone turns in front of them, or if they have to make a quick turn," Cuello said.
Or imagine how to drive like so many teenagers do, with a rowdy, distracting passenger in the car. Carlson got behind the wheel to simulate that exercise herself, with Robert Lindsay of the Allstate Driving Challenge mimicking a motor-mouthed teenager in the passenger's seat.
"Even when I tried to go slower and didn't knock the cones down, I was still not driving well," Carlson said.
"No, and it's actually visible. I could feel it inside, that it's not as smooth as when you were just kind of turning around here, and it really shows," Lindsay said.
Carlson said it felt like they were going really fast, but Lindsay pointed out that they were only going only about 10 or 15 mph.
Five thousands teenage drivers are killed in crashes each year, and 300,000 are injured. More often than not, driver error is to blame. The Allstate Distracted Driving Challenge is intended to hit that point home.
"The goal is for them to realize that one distraction can be fatal," Cuello said.
The teens seem to be getting the message.
"Just knowing that one of those cones can be a life that you're just killing right there – that's kind of shocking," Adcock said.
Come Jan. 1, 2010, texting while driving will be illegal in Illinois, although police admit the law will be tough to enforce. Penalties aside, police hope to prove that any distraction behind the wheel can cause an accident.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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