Canton High Grad's Tweet Wins Scholarship

CANTON, MI — Kevin Chen takes driving safety seriously. So much so, he created a scholarship-winning tweet in the Kelsey’s Law Scholarship Stop Distracted Driving Contest.

The Canton High School graduate and University of Michigan freshman took top honors in the “Best Tweet” category and won a $500 scholarship. A total of $5,000 was awarded by Michigan Auto Law, a Detroit area firm that specializes in helping vehicle accident victims.

The scholarship is named in honor of Kelsey Raffaele, a Sault Ste. Marie 17-year-old, who was killed in a 2010 car accident. Her mother, Bonnie Raffaele, went on to push for Michigan’s first teen cell phone ban law in 2012.

(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Plymouth-Canton Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Michigan Auto Law, which is well-known for publishing an annual list of Michigan’s most dangerous intersections, created the scholarship last year to bring to attention the growing problem of distracted driving among teens.

“The response we received was amazing,” attorney Steven Gursten wrote in an Oct. 16. Blog. “By working with high school students, we hope that we can reach an audience that might otherwise tune us out as older adults and as lawyers.”

Statistics indicate that vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teens in the United States, he added. About 11 percent of drivers involved in Michigan crashes were between ages 16 and 20, Gursten wrote.

In Chen’s tweet, he needed just 106 characters to explain what kind of danger can happen in five-second increments:

“Would you drive with your eyes closed? With every text being a 5 second blindfold… IT CAN WAIT. #xMyText”

Winning categories included:

• Overall Best Submission: $2,000
• Best Tweet Submission: $500
• Best Video Submission: $1,500
• Best Graphic Submission: $1,000

The law firm is taking submissions for the Kelsey’s Law Scholarship Stop Distracted Driving Contest 2018 scholarships. Information on how to apply can be found here.

Photo used with permission of Michigan Auto Law