When Texting While Driving Lands You on a Billboard

Taking two seconds to read a text while stopped in traffic is not nothing, as one San Francisco-based artist wants you to remember. Knowing that using a cell phone while driving can have similar reactionary effects on a driver as drinking, Brian Singer began a project called Texting While in Traffic (TWIT), which documents the texters and handset talkers of the roads with photographs right on the TWIT website, with the hope that this public callout will make you think twice before picking up your phone while driving. And as April marks Distracted Driving Awareness Month, the reminder couldn't come at a better time.

He invites others to share what they see on the road with detailed instructions that the photographer must be a passenger, is safe and doesn't distract other drivers while recording the incident of distracted driving, and only takes photos of moving cars. Any sort of distracted driving can be documented, not just phone use. So putting on makeup or eating at the wheel could also land you on TWIT.

Now that the project has gained some momentum, Singer has taken it from the virtual to the real world with 11 billboards around San Francisco showing distracted driving offenders where you can't miss them.

It's an interesting idea, to rally drivers to quit a dangerous habit by so publicly taking note of their offenses. But will it be effective?

Source: Brian Singer, Texting While in Traffic