If you use your phone to text or Snapchat your mates while driving, this awareness campaign will stop you from doing it ever again.
In the emotional clip from ItCanWait.com, a handful of people admit to using their mobiles while driving, whether that’s to text, Snapchat or check Instagram and Twitter.
“If someone that you like texts you, you can’t just sit there without knowing what they said,” says one woman, who confesses that she uses her mobile out of boredom while driving.
To begin with they all smile and laugh about their actions, but then things take a U-turn.
A woman called Jaycee walks onto the set, she is partially paralysed.
“I just really quickly want to have a chat and tell you about what happened to me,” she says, while sitting opposite them.
“When I was 21 years old and driving home from my college graduation ceremony, a driver on his phone was so distracted that he turned left into the intersection at a red light. Another car swerved to miss him and hit my family’s car.
“The resulting collision killed both of my parents.”
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She continues: “I spent two months in the hospital, fighting for my own life, and then two more months in a rehab hospital learning how to walk again, learning how to speak again, learning how to dress myself and how to feed myself.
“I live with a partially paralysed body. I didn’t have my daddy there to walk me down the aisle when I got married.”
Afterwards, many of the people who had admitted to using their phones while driving were in tears.
“I’m not going to look at my phone ever again,” says one woman while fighting back tears.
“I know this is hard, I’m sorry, it’s hard for me too,” says Jaycee. “But you know this is real, you have the power to really make a difference and do something about it.”
The powerful video was published on the American Facebook page Summer Break. It has been viewed four million times and shared a staggering 95,000 times.
It garnered an incredibly emotional response from Facebook users. One person wrote: “I’m in tears. If that happened to me or my brothers or parents got killed, I wouldn’t be able to live.”
Another person vowed never to use their phone while driving again. They wrote: “I admit I mess with my phone while driving. And I have often swerved and been inattentive while driving. I’m sorry.
“I will not text while driving anymore. And I am committed to no longer using my phone while driving anymore. No excuses.”