HOUSTON -- According to the Texas Department of Transportation, one in five vehicle crashes in Texas involves driver distraction.
The dangers of distracted driving became all too real for Joyce Osborne of Spring, when her 30-year-old son Thomas Klohn crashed his truck in Arizona.
Her first question for officers at the scene: “He was texting and driving, wasn’t he?”
Osborne says her son’s phone was ejected from the vehicle, and that’s how officers were able to confirm her suspicions that her son had been texting while driving.
Just a few weeks after burying Klohn – her only child and the father of three young children – Osborne took her message to the University of Houston as part of TxDOT’s “Talk, Text, Crash” campaign, sharing her personal tragedy with students.
“Don’t make my story your story,” Osborne told students on campus.
Her direct approach had an effect on student Carlos Martinez.
“I was texting today and driving, and my phone flew down, and when I reached to grab it, I almost crashed into a car,” Martinez said. “She really made me think about it today.”
Osborne says she wants state-wide legislation that would ban texting and driving, and she wants the consequences to be as stiff as getting a DUI.
But what she wants even more is for young drivers to know the consequences of distracted driving, even before they hit the road.
“Before you get your driver’s license, go to a morgue or a funeral home and see what happens to those who text and drive.”
TxDot is taking this campaign on the road and stopping in several cities around the state.