The scope and impact of the Texting & Driving … It Can Wait® movement has drawn comparisons to successful campaigns to change behaviors around smoking, wearing seatbelts and drunk driving.  That’s encouraging, because those efforts are, in many ways, models of the success we’re trying to achieve.

In the past four years, we’ve made great strides.

We’ve gathered more than 2,500 organizations and tens of thousands of individuals to help champion the cause. 

  • Together, we’ve helped raise awareness of the dangers of texting and driving to 97 percent or higher for every audience we’ve polled. 
  • The It Can Wait pledge campaign has inspired more than five million personal commitments not to text and drive. 
  • More than a million people have downloaded the free AT&T DriveMode® app that silences incoming text messages when you’re driving.
  • And preliminary research on crash data from Texas, Florida and Illinois is showing a strong, positive correlation between It Can Wait campaign activities and a projected reduction in crashes!

So in the next phase of our campaign, we’ll use some of the same social forces that compel people to text and drive, to get them to stop.

We’re introducing a social tool, “#X”, that fits naturally into texting conversations. It means “I’m checking out while I drive.  Back soon.”

We’ll team with celebrities to help promote awareness and use. 

Read the full blog post.