You are driving home and glance down at your phone for a few seconds to finish that quick text. Before you know it, you lose control of the car and end up injuring yourself or someone else all because of one simple decision.

Statistics from TextingandDrivingSafety.com may make you rethink everything you ever thought about this issue. Eleven teenagers per day are being killed because of texting and driving. There are 1,600,000 accidents per year due to texting and driving. It may seem harmless, but lives are being changed every day because of the ignorance surrounding this issue. Also, texting while driving increases your likeliness of causing an accident six times more than driving while intoxicated. It also increases your risk of getting in an accident by 23 percent!

These statistics are alarming, but there is a way to stop it: become more aware of what you are doing as you drive. Texting while driving is just one distraction people face as they drive. Talking on the phone, changing the radio station, and eating are all distractions even though they may not seem as serious. Just being more aware of what you are doing as you drive will make a huge difference.

I strongly believe that these rates will go down if people come to the realization that bad things can happen to you. Not only that, but you can end up seriously injuring someone else just because you wanted to finish one text. Texting and driving is something that I am very passionate about, probably because my father is a firefighter and sees the result of this. I have seen countless videos of teens texting and driving, and each one leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is because I know that things would be different if the driver didn’t send that text. Believe me, it can wait.