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.
