While much attention has been paid to the issue of drunk driving, a lesser known problem has silently claimed the lives of many. Texting while driving is known to be just as dangerous if not more so than drinking and driving.

While operating a motor vehicle weighing a ton and a half traveling at 70 mph, people choose to shift their attention from the road (the only thing you have to do while driving by the way) to a phone that’s useless if they’re not alive in the first place.

Sophomore Libo Chang opened up on the matter of texting while driving: “It is wrong because you aren’t able to fully pay attention to the road, and since driving has a very small margin of error in which lives can be taken, full attention should always be required.”

77 percent of people who text and drive feel confident that they have control during the multitasking, yet at least 23 percent of auto collisions involved a cellphone in 2011. These statistics are grossly lopsided, and shed light on the problem better than anything that most people believe something so dangerous could not possibly happen to them.

The scary part is that it can and it will, proved by the fact that eleven teenagers die every day in preventable car crashes, an awfully high number if you think about it.

When asked how to fix the problem, senior Sabrina Picardat proposed, “I think people have to be scared into it, in a way. Like they should be shown what happens when someone pays attention to their phone instead of driving. I know there are commercials, but it should be a mandatory thing when getting a license or permit.”

Junior Kristen Mcilroy agreed, “I think there should be a law passed against driving and texting.”

More lives than one could imagine are affected by simply touching the keyboard of a cellphone, and the notion that people put other’s lives in jeopardy by doing something preventable screams selfishness.