Texting and driving: U.S. official calls it 'epidemic'

Amos Johnson comes from North Carolina and finds it very painful to talk about his 16-year-old daughter Ashley. Police records show that two minutes before the crash that killed her, Ashley retrieved a text message. Her car swerved left and slammed head-on into a truck. It happened in May 2010 and left her father devastated.

"I was in denial," he says. "Not my kid, she wouldn't do that. But she did."

Heather Hurd was 26 when she was killed on a highway in Florida. It was a day filled with anticipation and excitement. She was on her way to meet her family and talk over wedding plans. A tractor trailer doing 65 miles an hour slammed into nine cars stopped at an intersection killing Heather and a young nurse in another vehicle. The driver never even applied his brakes.

"How could a professional not notice nine cars stopped at a traffic signal?" says Russell Hurd, not so much in anger, but genuine bewilderment.

"The driver was engaged in an act that has become more prevalent on our highways. He was text-messaging while driving an 80,000-pound tractor trailer."

Another devastated father.

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Ray Lahood, calls it an "epidemic" and has made "distracted driving" almost a personal crusade. He is a hard talker, direct, and for the second year, opened a national summit in Washington, focused on families and their losses. The Johnsons from North Carolina; the Hurds from Maryland; the Davis children from Minnesota.

"The biggest distraction in America today," says Lahood "is people thinking they can drive safely, with a cell phone in their hand, or texting." He could have substituted the word "Canada" for "America" or any other nation. All those cars and trucks and buses, he says, have become "unguided missiles" in the hands of talking or texting drivers.

And we've all done it, or still do it.

Russell Hurd's story might change your mind.

"Because of distracted driving, I will never get to walk a daughter down the aisle in her wedding dress. I will never get to hold a grandchild born to my daughter."

"I will never get to hear her wonderful giggle ever again."

He is an extraordinary advocate for a problem that ravages the roads of America and so many other countries. Canada is perhaps ahead of the United States, in that most provinces have adopted no texting and driving laws, but those who have lost family members say there is a lot of work to be done yet. Remember the controversy over seat belts. Well, in some ways it's happening again.

Just listen to Laurie Hevier's story. Her mother was 58, hiking alongside a highway in Minnesota. You know what happened next. The driver of the car was 19 years old. A young woman.

"There wasn't any attempt to brake," says Hevier. "There were no skid marks. She hit my mom at full speed."

The police estimated the driver was distracted for more than eight seconds. She was given a ticket for "inattentive driving" and fined $175.

"To me this was not a fluke accident," says Laurie, "it was a preventable one."

She paused to hold back tears, even though she's told this story many times now.

"I know this young driver did not intend to kill my mom, but then her choice to not pay attention while driving, cost our family dearly."

Thirty American states now have laws to ban texting and driving, or talking and driving, but the problem is often enforcement. Not enough police giving out tickets, says the Transportation Secretary. "We're back where we were when we started going after drunk drivers." By example, on the day the summit started in a Washington hotel, police were outside on the street stopping and ticketing drivers. And they caught a lot. Point taken.

Amos Johnson's story was among the most poignant. He and his daughter had talked often about not texting and driving, and yet, that's what she was doing when she lost control of her car.

"Ashley, she died on the highway that we live on," he says, "so I have to go by that scene every day, and every time I go there I'm more and more determined to get the word out. Not texting and driving, it can wait."

"At times," he says, "I just wonder how I can get through the day."