The fight was not supposed to end the way it did. Freshman Emily Traversa and her older sister Kayla Traversa were typical teenage sisters.
"Like any siblings, we fought," Emily said.
After the fight, 16-year-old Kayla decided to take a walk and was hit by someone who was texting and driving. Kayla is one of thousands of Americans who have been killed by someone texting and driving. Her sister Emily, who was 14 years old at the time, can still remember that night.
"We started fighting, and she was just like, ‘Fine, I'm going to walk to Dad's. I don't even want to be here anymore,'" said Emily, a pre-med major.
The teenage girls often took a walk to another house, either to their grandmother's or one of their parents' house when they needed to calm down.
Later that evening, Emily remembers answering the phone. The call was from Kayla's friend saying that Kayla had been hit on the road. At first Emily thought it was a prank to make her feel guilty about the argument. When she realized the call wasn't a joke, she handed the phone to her mother, ran outside and cried.
Kayla and her friend had been walking along the side of a paved road with no sidewalks when a red pickup truck struck Kayla in the back of the head with its side-view mirror. The man driving the truck was texting on a cell phone. According to Emily, the man was looking down at his phone, and when he saw Kayla, he attempted to swerve.
It wasn't enough.
"And then we heard the ambulance, and my mom went then. And [the ambulance] didn't even make it very far. It had only been five minutes," Emily said.
Kayla was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Kayla's death was one of around 16,000 deaths caused by drivers' texting between 2001 and 2007, according to the American Journal of Health. While exact data for 2009 ranges widely, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as reported by The New York Times, estimates that at least 6,000 deaths occurred in 2008.
In a speech given in April to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board Deborah A.P. Hersman cited a study from Virginia Tech concluding that texting while driving increases the chances of an accident by 23 times.
Texting is not the only issue involving cell phones and driving. Even taking the time to answer a phone call or dial a phone number causes the driver to look away from the road. According to the Los Angeles Times, an experiment done by Car and Driver magazine tested the time it took two staff members to stop their vehicles at 70 mph while driving drunk and driving while texting. Legally drunk with a 0.08 blood alcohol content level, one man stopped four feet past the baseline performance point, while drivers texting stopped anywhere from 70 to 319 feet beyond the baseline.
In order to decrease the likelihood of accidents while texting and driving, the U.S. Department of Transportation drafted a sample bill in February for states to outlaw texting and driving.
In Indiana, all cell phone use, including texting and calling, is permitted for drivers 18 years and older. As of Aug. 13, Indiana police had issued three tickets for drivers under 18 years old who were texting and driving, according to hands-freeinfo.com.
This year, there were five bills proposed in the Indiana General Assembly to ban cell phone usage to some extent, according to hands-freeinfo.com. District 26 Senator Sue Errington co-sponsored the House Bill 1279 once it passed the Indiana House of Representatives vote and moved on to the state Senate. The bill would ban texting while driving for all drivers. Fines for texting and driving could reach $500 under the bill's provisions.
While none of the five bills passed during the short 2010 legislative session, the chances that they will pass during the 2011 legislation period is greater because it will be a full session, according to hands-freeinfo.com
In comparison, 30 states and Washington, D.C., have placed a ban on texting while driving for all drivers, regardless of age or experience, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Nine states and Washington, D.C., have a ban placed on using handheld cell phone devices at any time while driving. California has both of these bans in place.
In April, Michigan banned texting while driving for all drivers. Junior actuarial sciences major Angela Zeiger, of Lansing, Mich., said texting and driving isn't safe and, unlike some of her friends, believes that the ban is a move in the right direction. Zeiger said she did not text while driving before the ban, instead she uses a Bluetooth set to talk on the phone.
"Then you hear the news that it's actually creating more problems because people try to hide it," she said. "And so, they're looking down and trying to hide it from the cops instead. It's kind of hard because you want it to help, but people are still going to do it."
Zeiger said there was a negative sentiment about the ban among younger drivers, specifically high school and college students, because they are constantly communicating. She said adults, especially parents, brought a lot of support for the ban.
As Hersman said in her speech to the Senate committee, which was reported on ntsb.gov, "You may be able to do this and get away with it hundreds or even thousands of times, but one day, you will look down at your cell phone at just the wrong moment and become an accident statistic."
It took one time for Emily and her family's lives to be changed forever.
Emily never uses her phone while driving, and if she is riding with someone who is texting and driving, she is not afraid to take his or her phone away. She urges people to pull over before answering their phone if it is an important conversation.
Immediately after Kayla's death, Emily was a big supporter of banning cell phone use while driving. Now she realizes that she can only do her part and make sure her friends and family do the same.
Four years later, the scars from Kayla's death may not be visible to outsiders, but Emily said they are still present.
"It's kind of like the big elephant in the room," she said. "No one actually wants to talk about it, but it's there."
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