11-6-13 texting-it can wait

Sontiana Brandts and Merry Dye want Wisconsin teenagers drivers to know how dangerous texting and driving is.  Merry and Sontiana are talking with high school students in the Fox Valley this week as part of the AT&T national It Can Wait campaign.  Dye, an Arkansas resident,  lost her 18 year old daughter in 2009, a day before her high school graduation, after she crashed her car while texting.  Brandts  from St. James, Minnesota is paralyzed from the chest down and will be  in a wheelchair for the rest of her life because she chose to text and drive when she was 16 years old.  "I was bringing my younger brother to wrestling practice and he forgot his cell phone so we turned around to get it and I was on my phone texting a friend.  I veered off the road and when I pulled back on I over corrected and rolled my vehicle and since I was also not wearing a seatbelt I was thrown from the vehicle,'  Brandts told AM 1170 WFDL's Between the Lines program.  "I spent two weeks in a coma and a total of eight months on the rehab floor at Mayo Clinic."   Dye says a new study shows why its extremely difficult for teens to say no to texting.  "The same area of the brain that is involved in driving is this part of the brain that says wait this isn't a good idea.  In teenagers that part of the brain isn't fully developed yet and that's why its so very dangerous,"  Dye said.  "The key is you have to have a plan before you start because your brain is going to go on auto pilot when that phone goes off, you're going to reach for it.  Its not really a choice, its a conditioned response, that's just how our brains are programmed."  She says you need to have a plan and says there are a lot of apps available that take care of it while you are driving.  "AT&T has one called Drive Mode.  When I'm going over 25 mph it automatically turns on, when there's a text message they get a response saying hey I got your message I'll get back to you when I'm not driving, or if its a call it goes straight to voice mail."   Dye says you can always just turn off your phone when you're driving.    Sontiana and Dye were guests on AM 1170’s Between the Lines program.