When I was twelve years old, a drunk driver hit my oldest brother in a head-on car collision.  The drunk driver sustained only minor injuries.  My brother Mark of just a mere seventeen years of age sustained head injuries disabling him both physically and mentally resulting in the need of 24/7 care/supervision for his remaining 40 years of life, if you can call it that.  Our mother cared of him for that forty years.  To say it really sucked the life out of our family would be an understatement.  There were many times over the years I had wished he had just died.  Every year thousands of lives are lost and countless others altered forever because of a bad life choice.   If drunk drivers weren’t enough, we’ve got something far worse than drunk drivers, we’ve got inattentive drivers, talking and texting on their cell phones.  Most people think cell phone use while driving is harmless because they aren’t altering their state of consciousness like drugs or alcohol do.  I beg to differ.  Cell phones take 100 percent of your awareness off the road.  I’ve been driving school bus for the past six years and have seen plenty of inattentive drivers on the road using their cell phones.  I was witness to the sound of a car crashing into the back of a car that stopped next to me as a child was getting on my bus.  The perpetrator plowed into the rear end of the car at fifty miles per hour, no brakes, no skid marks, no awareness.  The impact was so severe that person that got hit tore the driver’s seat from the chasse of the car and ended up in his back seat. He didn’t have a chance.  Wrong place, wrong time.  The perpetrator was texting.  Didn’t even see the car, just felt the sudden impact. Holly shit people, what’s it going to take.  Let’s take some responsibility for our actions and stay off our dam phones while we’re on the road.  This phenomenon isn’t restricted to drivers, pedestrians are being killed as well because they blindly step out into traffic while being distracted by their cell phone.  Just another form of addiction we’ve created for ourselves.  Another distraction diverting us from experiencing life.  I ask you to take a pledge with me.  Don’t text and drive.  Please share this pledge with others you love.