Perkiomen Valley Senior Project about Dangers of Texting Behind the Wheel

student Jonathan Collins wants to help put the brakes on texting while driving. As part of his senior project, which underlines the dangers of texting behind the wheel, Collins and some of his fellow Vikings took a simulated drive in a car Wednesday morning as they simulataneously attempted to send and receive text messages.

He found inspiration for his project while watching an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition last year. The featured family had lost their daughter, Alex Brown, in a texting-while-driving crash.

"I got to thinking how our school doesn't really do anything about that (when it comes to prevention education)," he said.

Although Collins admits he has texted while driving in the past, he says he hasn't done it since he started this project.

"I learned that texting is one of the biggest causes of distracted driving," he said.

He's learned that there are three types of distracted driving—manual, cognitive and visual—and texting hits all three, he said: manual because at least one hand is on the phone, cognitive because the mind is focused on the message, and visual because the driver's eyes are off the road.

Collins hopes the school will participate in a program like his senior project so future classes can be warned against texting behind the wheel.

members gladly opened the fire house's garage, which is across the street from the high school, to host the driving simulation.

Collins, his mom, Kim, and his fellow students were joined by representatives from StreetSafe Driving Academy and Louisa Chen, a personal injury lawyer with the firm White and Williams LLP.

Chen videotaped each teen's time behind the wheel; the footage will be shown during two assemblies at the high school Friday, Sept. 30. During that time, she and Collins will also speak to the students about texting while driving.

Chen said her work and family life have helped spur her interest in this topic. As a mother of two young children, she says she's become more aware of the threat of distracted and careless driving. As a personal injury lawyer, she said there are numerous teen defendants in depositions.

"It's heartbreaking," Chen said about the parade of young faces she sees across the table. The kids don't mean to cause the accidents, she said, and hopes this program will encourage teens to be more responsible while driving.

Chen added that she wants to extend the lesson to parents, who are also guilty of texting as they drive.

As the morning got under way, each teen took a turn behind the wheel of the StreetSafe vehicle, donning a pair of goggles that showed them different street scenes they had to navigate. After driving for bit to get comfortable with the simulator, the teens were instructed to either send a text to, read a text from or answer a phone call from one of their friends in the garage.

Bystanders couldn't see the scene, but sound effects were in full force. As the students took their eyes off the road to check their phones, many eventually tried to "correct" their steering, and everyone could hear tires squealing and an eventual crash.

After crashing in the simulation, Stephen Leonard, 16, yanked off the goggles and exited the car, exclaiming, "I'm NEVER texting while driving!"

Leonard has his learner's permit and will be going for his license test in less than a month.

"It's way too hard," he added. "I think I hit, like, 15 things. It's harder than it looks."

Sean Daly, 17, said he thought an experience like this one would be "a nice wake-up call" for fellow students.

"People think about drinking and driving, but there are other behaviors that can be just as bad and destructive," he said.