Exposing the Dangers of Texting and Driving

On Monday, during sixth period, 18-year-old Tristan Nunez and Mr. Yohe welcomed students to the PAC. The goal of the presentation was to teach students about how dangerous texting and driving can be. Once the audience was seated, the event started off with a video on racecar driving. Mr. Yohe then welcomed Nunez to the podium to speak.

Tristan Nunez is a racecar driver sponsored by Mazda; he’s been driving karts and cars since he was thirteen years old. He opened the speech by explaining that after he caught his mom texting and driving, he vowed to travel around Florida to speak to students about the dangers of distracted driving.

Nunez then showed a PSA video sponsored by AT&T that included friends and family of those who have died in texting-related accidents. A woman lamented sending the text that led to her sister’s fatal accident. A man talked about how he suffers brain damage because he was the passenger of a driver who was texting. A family celebrated what would be the 19th birthday of a girl who died driving to her boyfriend’s baseball game.

Nunez closed off the event by answering questions from the audience. In the last few minutes of sixth period, Nunez signed autographs and took pictures as students left to their seventh period classes.