THUNDER BAY -- If texting and driving at highway speeds, a person could travel the length of a football field without looking up.
A new video campaign called Last Words, which aims to raise awareness about the dangers of texting and driving, was launched at Lakehead University Wednesday.
A partnership between the Thunder Bay District Health Unit, the City of Thunder Bay and the Ministry of Transportation, the campaign had university students watch a brief video depicting the tragic consequences of distracted driving and then answer a survey about their own driving habits.
The video depicts a crash between a young woman who is texting and another vehicle driven by a mother and her two children.
Third-year kinesiology student Tyler White said the video made him think about the severity of texting and driving.
“I’ve done it myself before but you just never really think,” said the 20-year-old.
“The biggest thing about the video is how fast it happened and the lady in the video said she’s not even halfway through her text and within a split second it affected not only herself but everyone else in the car the other lady was in,” said White.
Last Words will be shown at SilverCity Theatre throughout the holiday blockbuster season and Tom Marinis with the MTO’s road safety marketing office said it’s another way to get the message through to the younger generation.
But he also said that drivers of all ages text and drive; it’s not just youth.
“We see that so many people still text and drive even at a stop light, at an intersection or they’re still on their phone. We see it all the time, all of us as motorists,” Marinis said.
Distracted driving currently comes with a $280 to $500 fine if convicted. But the recently introduced road safety bill proposes fines up to $1,000 with three demerit points upon conviction.
More collision-related fatalities are caused by distracted driving than impaired and speed-related driving and the health unit’s injury prevention public health nurse Judi Marton said the leading cause of death for youth ages 16 to 24 is motor vehicle collisions.
Marton said a big part of the campaign isn’t just about showing the ripple effect a collision has but also empowering passengers to speak up.
“People are afraid to tell the driver of the car, feeling embarrassed or they’ll get mad at them,” she said. “We want passengers to feel it’s OK to ask that person to not text and drive while they’re in the car.”
