Texting and Driving is the leading cause of death in teenagers. Distracted driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. 3,450 people died due to distracted driving in 2019 and 391,000 people were injured. Dialing a phone while driving increases your crash risk six times, and texting can increase it 23 times. 26% of all crashes are caused by distracted driving.
To assist in stopping these numbers from increasing, two students from the Biomedical Program at Western Technology Center in Burns Flat, Cassidy Blanchard and Marquez Borjas, are working on a community awareness project over distracted driving. The project entails holding assemblies at eight different schools around the area.
On January 28th they held an assembly at Cordell High School, with the help of the Cordell Fire Department and Tim Tutton From the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Each speaker spoke for about 15 minutes on how dangerous distracted driving can be. Along with the presentation from the officers Cassidy and Marquez also put together a video of them interviewing fellow classmates, from the Biomed program. The students spoke about a classmate they lost to distracted driving in November of 2018.
They chose to do this project because of the loss of their classmate, but also in hopes of being able to change how students their age view how dangerous distracted driving can really be. Cordell High School students signed a pledge saying that they will not text and drive. It is important that the public understands the dangers of texting and driving and a conscious effort is made to end a devastating problem that is easily fixed.