Essential Question:

What is the responsibility of the individual to society?

What is the responsibility of the individual driver to other drivers and pedestrians?
How can the individual driver keep himself and others safe?
What behaviors do teens engage in while driving that can distract them?

Watch Video [4:15] at this site.

Ask students the essential question. Encourage students to think about their responsibilities to other people when they get behind the wheel.

Pose these questions to the class, and tally their responses.

Have you ever texted (either sending or receiving) while driving?
Do you think you can safely text and drive at the same time? Yes or No?
Do you think it is ever safe for anyone to text and drive at the same time? Yes or No?
What most distracts you when you drive?

While students, read independently, enter your group's totals into this Google Docs Spreadsheet.
- You must be logged in to your school email to access spreadsheet.
- To type in a cell, click on the desired cell: it should highlight the cell in blue. You can then type in the cell.
- For the first three questions, enter one number--the total for your advisory group. For the last question, you may enter more than one response from your advisory. Be sure to put the responses in the same cell.
- Multiple people can enter data into the cell simultaneously, so make sure you're typing on your advisory row.

Read aloud the first few paragraphs, "thinking aloud" as you read.
Then, have students read the rest independently.
Encourage students to annotate or "mark up" the text, underlining key parts, jotting questions, connections, key ideas in margins.

Encourage students to connect personally to the article. You might pose these questions to the whole class for discussion:

When you hear statistics that show using a cell phone while driving--whether talking or texting--is a distraction, does it worry you or change your habits?
Have you ever lost control of the car, veered into another lane or gone off the road while texting?
Have you ever been in a vehicle when the the driver was texting?
What other "distractions" do drivers engage in that endanger themselves and others?

Display results of survey, and give students time to discuss. Don't forget to refresh the page to update the results.

Watch Video [:34]: State trooper videos a real crash caused by texting.