“I needed medical attention and I was hurting and he was hitting and pushing me and calling me fat."INDIANAPOLIS – The ads in a new AT&T public-awareness campaign against texting and driving unveiled Tuesday by state and local officials are stark and simple.
One of the campaign’s advertisements shows “Yeah t” on the TV screen as a woman narrates: “This is the unfinished text message that my son was typing when he drove off the road and died of a massive skull fracture.”
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller hosted AT&T Indiana President George S. Fleetwood and Sen. Tom Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, to urge drivers – especially young drivers – to resist the temptation to send or check text messages while driving.
AT&T’s national campaign will use print, radio, TV and online advertising, as well as in-store signage, and will be rolled out in coming weeks.
Zoeller’s involvement was personal, as his office has no direct connection to the issue.
The attorney general, who has two teenage children, told reporters he keeps his phone in his briefcase in the back seat of the car to avoid using it.
“Young drivers may already have a false sense of invulnerability. Couple that with the fact that today’s young drivers are from a generation that has possessed cell phones longer than they have had driver’s licenses, and you have a recipe for a multitasking disaster,” Zoeller said.
In 2009, the Indiana General Assembly updated the state’s graduated driver’s license law to prohibit Hoosier drivers younger than 18 from talking on cell phones or texting while driving.
It was authored by Sen. Travis Holdman, R-Markle.
“As texting-type tasks continue to grow in popularity, we have to use what resources are available to help reduce the amount of crashes and fatalities on our roads,” Holdman said.
A bill to expand the texting ban to all drivers was blocked in the Senate this year by a Republican committee chairman.
Research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that nearly 6,000 people died in crashes involving distracted or inattentive drivers and more than half a million were injured. The most frequent offenders are the youngest and least-experienced drivers, men and women younger than 20, the research found.
To learn more about AT&T’s campaign, go to www.facebook.com/att.
For more about the dangers of texting while driving, go to the U.S. Department of Transportation Web site www.distraction.gov.
