Conner Hensley was driving behind a car that was constantly wandering in and out of its lane, so he honked his horn three or four times to alert the driver. He soon realized the teenager behind the wheel was looking down and texting on his phone far more than he was looking at the road.
Hensley, a UTC Health and Human Performance Exercise Science major and secretary of The National Society of Collegiate Scholars at UTC, is from Etowah, Tennessee. He is familiar with the consequences of texting and driving.
His home is near the site of a horrific crash caused by a teenage driver who was texting and hit a McMinn County Sheriff’s Department deputy’s car head-on. Both were injured in the crash, but upon their recovery, they have paired up to educate drivers about the importance of paying attention to the road.
“I feel very strongly that people should not text when they drive,” Hensley said.
It’s why he joined a group of students on campus who took the AT&T pledge—he promised not to text and drive.
As part of its No Texting and Driving Campaign, AT&T introduced a new hash tag, #X, to convey it’s time to leave a conversation and start driving.
Many young drivers feel pressure to respond to their friends and text them while they are behind the wheel. By placing #X on social media sites or in ongoing texting conversation, a user notifies all parties that they are leaving the conversation to pay attention to the road.
Be part of the UTC movement to stop texting and driving. Take the pledge to not text and drive. Text ICWMOCS to 464 329. The responding message will say: “Thanks for pledging not to text and drive and for joining the #ItCanWait movement.”
Spread the word and visit www.ItCanWait.com
