A hush fell over the Edina High School Performing Arts Center when Dan Phillips reached into his duffel bag and showed the assembly of 10th-graders what's left of the sweatshirt his daughter was wearing the night she died in a crash attributed to distracted driving.

Vijay Dixit, in his turn, lost a college-age daughter in a split second when the driver of the car she was riding in lost control and crashed while reaching for a napkin.

Michael Vang spoke publicly for the first time since the night two years ago when he reached for his cell while driving in Oakdale and rear-ended a motorcyclist.

April is Distracted Driving Awareness month, the time of year when surveys reveal the types of behaviors that motorists engage in while behind the wheel and safety advocates implore drivers to keep their attention on the task at hand.

The admonitions and statistics on the dangers of distracted driving are sobering. Distraction is a factor in nearly six of 10 moderate-to-severe teen crashes, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

But numbers don't tell the whole story. That's up to real people, victims and offenders, whose lives changed permanently because of a motorist who drove while distracted. That's why Edina sophomore Lauren Herrmann invited the three speakers to talk to her classmates.

Herrmann said she never gave much thought to using a cellphone while driving until she sat in on an impact panel while taking driver's education through AAA Minneapolis. The grief she heard and witnessed that day was eye-opening, she said, and totally changed her view about distracted driving.

"I didn't think it was a big deal. I thought it was only a law to keep people safe," said Herrmann, who wrote a research paper on the topic.

"As I heard these stories, I'm learning that it's a lot more dangerous than I thought, and there are a lot more consequences that come from it. It's really a big issue. You can't easily look at your phone in a few seconds; so many things can happen. I hope they [my classmates and other drivers] will try not to look at their phones as much."

Stories 'get to you'

Distracted driving was far from an epidemic in 2007 when Phillips' daughter, Kelly, was killed. The vibrant high school senior was ejected from a car that rolled over on a rural county road when the driver, texting and speeding, overcorrected and went into a ditch. Eight years later, Phillips said he hopes he can spare others his pain.

"They cut off her clothes," he told the students while holding shredded sweatshirt bearing the emblem of the Colorado Buffaloes, a school his daughter had considered for college.

"Nobody thinks it will happen to them, and then it happens."

Student Grant Wothe, who once bumped into a car while innocently reaching for a water bottle, said Wednesday's presentation got his attention.

"Their stories really get to you," he said. "You think of what you are doing in the car that day and what you've done in the past. Driving is really a dangerous thing."

Dixit told students that distracted driving crashes result from poor actions, and all of them are totally preventable.

"What they heard is real stories and saw the faces of distraction," he said. "You don't think about it until something happens."