1. Imagine yourself, late at night, driving in a rush to get home from work because you want to get
to sleep. As you’re driving along you hear your phone receive a text message from one of your good
friends and you just can’t help but to check what they said. When you check the message you decide it
couldn’t hurt to type up a quick response. However, in the five seconds that you looked down, you
swerved off of the road into a nearby ditch flipping your car multiple times. Everything goes black and
you eventually wake up with no memory of what happened after the accident. Your family and a few of
your friends are surrounding your bed and you try to get up to ask what had happened, but you can’t
move your legs even an inch no matter how hard you try; you’re paralyzed. Hi, my name is Jon Haney
and texting while driving is an issue that I’ve always found to be absolutely absurd. Laws have been put
in place to try and prevent it, but I’ve never heard of any people being fined for it and I don’t expect
many people to be caught in the near future. I wanted to do something to help stop it and when I heard
of the senior project I immediately thought of texting while driving. I figured the best way to prevent it
was to scare people with statistics and get them to pledge to not perform this dangerous act.
Getting people to pledge to not text and drive would require something for them to sign,
information to convince them, and a strategic location to set up my pledging station. Getting something
for the pledgers to pledge to and sign was a very easy part of the process. Obviously if I was going to get
people to pledge to not text and drive I would require something for them to sign. To keep it within my
limited budget, I made my own pledge sheets with forty four lines on each page. After making the
sheets I decided that my product will be all the pledges that I obtain. Also, so people would know what
they’re pledging, I typed exactly what it was that they were pledging to do. If I wanted to convince
citizens that I’ve never met to pledge to something I made I would need to bring them in with some
interesting facts. The research paper helped out a large amount with getting facts to attract people since
it involved gathering information on texting while driving. After I gathered all my information I made a
stand up poster with the facts, the pledge, and some pictures of accidents for a visual. However, getting
a decent area for me to set up my stand proved to be more difficult than I expected it would be. I had
difficulty with this because when I was ready to set up the Girl Scouts were out selling cookies and
taking up every efficient spot. Fortunately, I didn’t let that prevent me from getting some work done
because I asked Lieutenant Colonel Holly of the Creekview JROTC if he could hand some of the pledge
sheets out during his classes. The research paper we did came in handy a very large amount. The topic
of my research paper was none other than the dangers of texting while driving. This topic tied in more
than any topic I could chose since it helped me with getting information to use on my posters. A very
surprising fact I learned from researching the topic was that texting while driving has a four hundred
percent increase in time spent with your eyes off the road. I had originally planned to give a texting
while driving thumb ring to each pledger that would remind them of what they did every time they try
to text while driving. Getting enough rings for each pledger proved to be upsettingly difficult even
though I had a couple of ways to get rings. What first came to my mind to get money for the rings was to
place a donation jar in different places to raise money. For this I made another stand up poster that said
what I need the money for and what I plan to do with it and it also had some facts and pictures in it and
set it up behind the jar. Unfortunately, raising money for that was very unsuccessful and only raised
around seventy dollars and I was told that not many people even looked at the poster. Yet, I persevered
and moved on to asking different insurance companies for donations figuring they of all companies

2. would support the cause most. I had one company right away send some rings to me, but it was only
two hundred and fifty of them which is not nearly enough. Although, I did thank them for their
generosity and tried a new company for help in any shape or form. The next company responded to my
email saying that they would gladly donate however many rings I needed if I would make a texting while
driving video for them to use. This greatly excited me because it was an opportunity to be involved in a
commercial and gain the exact help I needed. I responded to their email asking for more information on
this commercial and, haplessly, they never responded. I decided to move past giving out rings since it
was wasting too much time and chose to focus on my actual product.After I made my anti texting while
driving poster I decided to set up my pledging station outside of Walgreens. I learned many things while
asking people to pledge such as many of the older and not as technologically advanced people did not
sign because they do not text in the first place. Also, the eighteen to early twenties people wanted to
sign before I asked because they either knew someone involved in an accident or they feel very strong
about it because it started to become a problem around the time they were driving. Another group of
people who almost always wanted to pledge were the moms with children which I guess is because this
problem scares them since they have children that will be driving in the future. Many of the younger
teenagers who were new to driving didn’t even acknowledge or care about the pledge because they
were number one offenders of it. It also irritated me greatly when there was a dad with his early
teenage boy who said no to pledge because it was just setting up a very bad example for his child, but I
just smiled and told them to have a nice day anyway. I even had one woman who became very upset
after I asked her and told me that she wanted to pledge, but didn’t want to end up not staying true to it
and didn’t pledge. I had a very fun time asking people and observing their reactions and felt great when
people told me how happy they were about my cause. It took me a while to find a good project
facilitator and eventually found out that my mom has a connection to the Gilmer County Sheriff’s
Office.For my project facilitator I decided Sergeant Dotson of the Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office would
be my best option. I chose him because he is also the Supervisor of the School Resources Unit and
figured that he would be a lot of help. He brought me to one of his C.H.A.M.P.S. classes which he
teaches at the middle school nearby the station, which stands for Choosing Healthy Activities and
Methods Promoting Safety, and added in some information on texting while driving. All in all, I don’t feel
that we contacted each other that often or he helped me with getting my product finished much. I
learned that I can be much more persistent than I ever knew when I’m dedicated to something and that
I can always come to a compromise if something doesn’t work out. If I had a larger budget I would
certainly pursue this topic and spread the word more to the best of my ability.
Finally, I learned how dangerous texting while driving can truly be and how many lives it has
claimed and ruined. I’ve learned how hard it can be to attract people’s attention to help support your
cause. It’s most certainly not a simple goal to achieve, but it has a very satisfying feel of accomplishment
when you get it done. I’m certain that not many people share my opinion on this, but I feel that that the
concept of the senior project is a great idea and that it brings out someone’s true colors and capabilities
because I certainly know that it did that with me.