PLYMOUTH, Minn. - Distracted driving is a deadly problem that doesn’t have to be. It is 100 percent preventable. And yet, year after year, more people are killed from being distracted behind the wheel.
Gabe Hostetler, a senior at Robbinsdale Armstrong High School, is a finalist in the Toyota TeenDrive365 Video Challenge. Gabe’s one-minute PSA was one of nearly 1,500 submissions nationwide that warns people not to drive distracted.
“When I was thinking about this video, I wanted to come at it from a different perspective than I thought a lot of the other videos did,” Gabe said.
And so he wrote the script of a mother crying at the crash site of her son, who was driving distracted.
“When you’re texting and driving, you’re not only putting yourself in danger, but your loved ones and the people who care about you most – they are going to be so hurt by anything that happens to you, so you need to think about them," Gabe said.
Gabe’s goal for his PSA is to connect with the people of his generation.
“I don’t want to say addicted, but we just naturally have this attachment to our cell phone screens," he said. "When there is any given moment that we can be on them, we want to be on them.”
If you would like to watch Gabe’s PSA and vote for it, you can do so right here.
Voting ends April 18, 2017.