Kudos to AT&T as well as Verizon and Sprint for banding together to help promote “Safe” Driving Practices, specifically to teenagers about the dangers of Texting and Driving. Like most of us I saw the PSA’s which started during the Olympics where the injured drivers or their family members spoke (some with slurred speech due to their injuries) about how just one single text has now crippled or maimed them for the rest of their lives and how needless this practice is. As much as we are becoming overly connected and how great it is to be productive anywhere at anytime, we are all becoming painfully aware of the Law of Diminishing Returns which says, “More is good up to a point”!
There is a time and place for everything but Texting and Driving cannot and should not ever be part of that conversation, end of story, case closed. Kids, Adults, new or experienced drivers need to stop as the impact of just one single life will never justify why you couldn’t pull over and prevent distracted driving. AT&T is sponsoring a “Take The Pledge Day” on September 19th and is asking us to visit the website, http://itcanwait.org, so take a few minutes to not only submit your pledge but read about how we need to avoid this ever-increasing and dangerous practice. I’ll still promote “Let’s Go Mobile” but will now change my tag line to “Let’s Go Mobile – Safely” going forward and I hope that you all will take that same challenge. Thanks, Glen
AT&T asks drivers to take no-texting pledge
- “It Can Wait” aims to end the practice of texting and driving
- On September 19, AT&T is hosting No Text on Board — Pledge Day
- 43% of teens admit to texting while behind the wheel
- Gripping ads feature victims injured or killed while texting
(CNN) — Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, was watching the Olympics with his daughter when she saw it — an ad featuring a man in a wheelchair suffering from a severe brain injury and holding a sign with the text: “Where r.”
“This is the text message that caused the car accident that changed my life forever,” the man said.
According to Stephenson, the ad did its job.
“She said, ‘Dad … that’s heavy’,” he said. “I said, it’s supposed to be heavy. It got your attention and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”
The ad, from AT&T, is part of the mobile company’s “It Can Wait” campaign. First launched in 2009, the campaign aims to curb texting and driving, especially among young drivers. It will be ramping up between now and September 19, or what the campaign is calling “No Text on Board — Pledge Day.”
AT&T is asking all Americans to visit ItCanWait.com on or before that day and take a pledge to not text behind the wheel.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, texting while driving increased 50% in one year (2010), when 20% of all drivers admitted to texting or sending an e-mail while driving.
Teens report doing so at more than twice that rate, with 43% admitting to doing so in an AT&T survey.
People texting are 23 times more likely to get into an accident than other drivers, according to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
Several AT&T competitors, including Sprint and Verizon, have their own anti-texting-and-driving campaigns in one form or another, a fact Stephenson said he welcomes.
“If it’s just AT&T owning this issue, it doesn’t get the traction it needs,” he said. “This is a dead-serious issue and I don’t mean that as a pun. People are dying … we just need everyone to get after this and reverse this trend.”
But with the ads like the one Stephenson watched with his daughter, AT&T’s campaign has been most visible. Stephenson makes no apologies about the frank nature of the ads, another of which features a woman sharing the one-word text she’d sent to her sister, who was reading it behind the wheel when she flipped her car and died.
“I don’t think you’re going to move the needle without making people uncomfortable,” he said.
Others supporting the campaign include the National Safety Council, National Organizations for Youth Safety, wireless-industry trade association CTIA and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
As to the pledge, Stephenson acknowledges that such efforts can be spotty in terms of verifiable results. But anything that draws attention to the problem is a plus, he said.
“We’ve all made these pledges, and some stick and some don’t,” said Stephenson. “But just the act, the effort of going to a website and taking the pledge … now you’re aware.”
TXTING @ THE WHEEL BAD 4 U?
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