Text Causes Texas Football Star's Crash

Texas linebacker suffers concussion, learns lesson

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 5:39 PM PDT, Tue, Jun 30, 2009

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Do you text while driving? Go ahead, be honest. In some states it's illegal to even use the phone while driving. Some places make you pull over to designated lanes for phone use. and other laws allow conversation so long as the driver uses some sort of headset. But then you have to be that guy with the Bluetooth on, and nobody wants to be that guy. It's quite a conundrum.

But for all the vagaries of in-car phone usage, we can likely all agree that texting while driving is about as dangerous as it gets. Not only is your focus elsewhere than on the road, your hands are physically typing and your eyeballs are looking at your phone. You might as well put on a blindfold and take your hands off the wheel.

Texas linebacker Sergio Kindle -- and yes, when we first read this story, we thought Sergio had perhaps been felled by a popular online bookstore's e-reader -- was "either sending or receiving" a text message, according to his attorney, when his car slammed into an apartment building in Austin, Texas. No one was hurt in the accident. Kindle suffered a concussion, but was able to pull his car back out into the street and drive home with little event.

And so our story ends. Large, very strong linebacker suffers concussion, is still somehow able to move his car back onto a road and drive home. This is why he can text message in the car and you cannot: supreme physical superiority. But really, kids, be safe out there. Wear the dorky Bluetooth.