December 12, 2011

Studies show texting and driving causes more car crashes than drinking and driving for teen drivers. A group of students from Albemarle High School's Drama Department decided to pick up a camera and do something to change that.

"A lot of people don't mean to text and drive they just think 'I'll do it once,'" said Kelly Wilson, a student at Albemarle High School.

The drama students are writing and directing their own commercial about the dangers of texting and driving.

"The hardest part would have to be finding something where teenagers aren't going to watch it and think 'oh it's never going to happen to me,'" said Katie Kellenberger.

The commercial's concept is simple, the teen driver begins to text and hits a child that has darted into the road.

"The message doesn't start out 'don't text, don't text' it's a normal situation and it shows that anything could happen while you are texting and driving," Wilson added.

The students also wrote about new technologies like pass codes on cell phones, things they say make them less likely to hand off their phone and more likely to just send the text themselves "Sometimes that will be more of an incentive to text and drive," said Kellenberger.

The commercial will be shown to students in all Albemarle County Public Schools. "A bunch of people are going to see this and hopefully think 'oh wow, that could happen to me' and hopefully we can have an affect on people," said Kellenberger.

The commercial will also be submitted to Project Yellow Light, a scholarship contest held in memory of Hunter Garner, a Spotsylvania teen killed in a car crash in 2007.