Teenagers experience dangers of distracted driving

A group of Colorado Springs teenagers experienced firsthand the dangers of distracted driving Wednesday.

Jeff Westover, a driving instructor with Allstate Insurance, helped set up a course in the parking lot of the World Arena.

Westover said he and Allstate representatives travel across the country to teach teens about the dangers of distracted driving.

At first, instructors asked teen drivers and their parents to navigate through the course without any distractions and timed them.

Then, instructors added distractions such as talking on the phone and text messaging while driving.

Most drivers actually ended up getting through the course faster when they were texting.

Instructors pointed out that speeding is common while distracted because drivers pay less attention to their speed.

Monica Spachek, 16, has been driving since December and has a clean record. She has never been ticketed or gotten into a crash, even a fender bender.

Even though she is a careful driver, she said the course was hard enough without any distractions.

Then, when she tried to text and drive, she voiced frustrations and could barely send out one-word responses from her cellphone.

Westover also pointed out that Spachek hit two cones when she was distracted.

Spachek said she never texts while driving and often encourages friends to leave their phones alone while one the road.

Driving instructors said they hope that teens like Spachek motivate their peers to turn off their phones while driving because any temptation can be dangerous.

He stressed that no phone call or text message is worth a life.