On Tuesday, December 1, the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety joined Greenwood in a lesson on texting and driving. Outside in the Greenwood parking lot, the students underwent a simulator that shows how the driver looks when he pulls out his phone and starts texting while driving. The simulator was in a trailer, the simulator itself looking like a video game setup.

“It was really hard to stay on the right side of the road and keep a steady speed,” said junior Max Colburn. The instructors count how many times you look down and back to the road. This will cause the driver to not have his full attention on the road. Max looked up and down 11 times during his drive.

Senior Graham Champion finished with a total of 17 times looking up and down. “This experience really opened my eyes up to the dangers of texting and driving; it’s definitely not worth it,” said Graham. Both students described the simulation to be very accurate, and the hardest part was getting their phones out of their pockets.

Once at average speed, the tester will ask you to pull your phone out. He then asks you to type a message and counts how many times you look up. Overall, the experience was eye-opening to the dangers of texting and driving but got the message across in an interesting way.The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year, along with 330,000 Fatalities. Texting is not the smartest thing to do while driving. Drive safe and don’t text while driving!