Photo by Joe Imel/Daily News Jaylin Savage, a 16-year-old Bowling Green High School junior, drives over traffic cones Thursday as she texts during a demonstration of texting and driving at the school.

advertisement

With the inexperienced driver focused more on sending a text message than on the road ahead of her, the girl in the middle of the street didn’t stand a chance.

“I wrote, ‘hey, what’s up? I need to talk to ...’ and then I ran over her,” said Natalie Rickman, 16.

Fortunately, the “pedestrian” was just a cardboard cutout and Rickman, a junior at Bowling Green High School, was one of several students in driver’s education teacher Kevin Wallace’s class attempting to navigate a course while typing out a text message.

With the assistance of the Bowling Green Police Department, BGHS students received a first-hand look Thursday at the dangers of distracted driving, participating in a project called “Watch the Road, Not the Cell.”

The exercise involved students driving through a course set up in the school’s parking lot.

The course consisted of two parts - the first part involved two rows of orange road cones about the width of a car lane set up in a way to require drivers to veer to the right before slightly turning to the left.

After clearing that part, the second part involved another set of cones creating a road that widened halfway through, with a “pedestrian” in the middle.

As the student drivers approached the pedestrian, BGPD Officer Barry Pruitt shouted either “right” or “left,” and students had about a second to go in the direction called out by Pruitt in an attempt to avoid hitting the cutout.

Most students had little problem navigating the course without texting on a cell phone, but the results were strikingly different when students attempted to construct a complete sentence on their phones while driving.

In many cases, students struck the road cones and either brushed against or plowed over the pedestrian.

“You’re either driving or you’re texting; you can’t do both very well,” Pruitt said. “I hope these kids take away from this the fact that texting and driving is not safe.”

The course was designed to simulate driving at 35 mph, Pruitt said.

Wallace said that he can talk about the dangers of distracted driving in the classroom, but giving students the chance to find out for themselves behind the wheel in a closed course makes a stronger impression.

“I think any time you can get some level of personal experience in a dangerous situation, it’s advantageous,” Wallace said.

Will King, BGHS literacy coach, said the project is intended to benefit students outside the driver’s ed program as well, with five other classes or student groups participating in some kind of connected activity.

Students in the multimedia class filmed the exercise, and the footage will be used to create public service announcements, King said.

For a math class, King said some students will create a statistical analysis comparing a student’s ability to drive under normal circumstances to driving while texting.

In social studies and language arts classes, students talk about laws against texting while driving and how legislation gets made and will write letters to state legislators advocating for a change in state law.

“This all originated when we were discussing a project that we envisioned would bring in as many students as possible and also involve the community,” said Diane Simmons, school technology integration specialist.

Several states have banned texting while driving, though it is not illegal to do so in Kentucky. Rep. Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, has prefiled legislation that would make texting while driving illegal and punishable by a fine.

Rickman, who has her driver’s license, said she texts “constantly,” and has done so behind the wheel before, but she will try to avoid doing that in the future.

“It’s not a good thing, but most of the time I have a friend with me in the passenger seat and I’ll ask her to text my sentences for me,” Rickman said.