This should make you think twice about sending a text while driving.
In April 2011, a woman named Aimee Eckert was driving down an Alabama road on a seemingly normal day when a car hit her head-on. The driver in the other vehicle was texting on her phone.
“They say she was going about 75,” she told another local news station. Now, Aimee has metal in every limb and had to get surgery on her heart. She also had her leg amputated at the knee.
But she said that losing her unborn child is the worst thing of all.
“I never got to touch him,” she said. “I always feel the loss.”
Aimee said that regarding texting and driving, “It’s just not worth it.”
According to WLWT, nearly every bone in her body was broken.
“The only thing that wasn’t broken was my neck and my back,” she said. “I had facial fractures, both collar bones, just about all my ribs, both hips, pubic bone, both legs, both arms.”
She said that her prosthetic leg is her strength to go on despite losing her child.
“To go through that much trauma, to die three times, I mean, there’s a reason I’m still here. I don’t know if this is the reason, but I'll do anything I can to help spread the message and prevent that from happening to someone else,” Eckert said.
Her message is a reminder not to text and drive.
“Distracted driving is something that is unsafe, irresponsible and in a split second, the consequences can be deadly,” said Ohio trooper Tom Bloomberg, according to WLWT. “Simple things like reaching for your soda in your center console, changing your radio stations, combing your hair, something like that. Those kind of things that people really don’t think about, they’re still the same distracted driving that can cause those serious accidents.”
Eckert now speaks at schools regarding the dangers of texting and driving.
“If I can save one person’s life for the story and what I’ve been through, it’s worth it,” she said, adding that she has a license plate that reads, “DNT TXT.”
Regarding texting and driving, the FCC says:
-The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in 2012 driver distraction was the cause of 18 percent of all fatal crashes – with 3,328 people killed – and crashes resulting in an injury – with 421,000 people wounded.
-Forty percent of all American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger, according to a Pew survey.
- Family of 4, Including 2 Children, Killed in Horrific Memorial Day Holiday Crash
- 3 Members of New Jersey Family Killed in Alleged Drunk Driver Crash in New York, Say Police
- ‘It’s a School Shooting’: Heart-wrenching Texts Denver Students Sent Loved Ones
- Woman Accused of Harassing Man With 159,000 Text Messages, Breaking Into His Home, Speaks Out
-The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted.
-Eleven percent of drivers aged 18 to 20 who were involved in an automobile accident and survived admitted they were sending or receiving texts when they crashed.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s a video simulating the dangers:
