Last month the Nashville law firm of Raybin & Weissman announced the winners of its 2018 Texting and Driving Scholarships at a ceremony at the firm’s offices on Church Street.

The annual scholarship competition—which is open to high school juniors & seniors, as well as college students—asks entrants to submit video Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that highlight the dangers of texting and driving.

This year's winners included Jacob Fawcett, a high school senior at Hunters Lane High School, who won $1,000 as the contest's Davidson County winner. Coal Dye, a senior at Grace Christian Academy was awarded $1,000 as winner for the state of Tennessee.

Both videos are both powerful and creative, with Fawcett’s PSA (titled “Already Dead”) featuring a model skeleton as a prop, and Dye’s video emphasizing the unique value of each individual human life.

Raising Awareness About Texting & Driving Accidents in Nashville

Over the years, the Raybin & Weissman scholarship contest has made a huge difference in terms of raising awareness about the risks of texting & driving, not only in Nashville and the state of Tennessee, but the rest of the United States as well.

In fact, the competition has generated more than 4,000 entries since its inception, not to mention some incredibly effective PSAs, including the one produced by Chandler Warrick, who won for the state of Tennessee last year.

In many cases, contest entrants have been inspired to help raise awareness as a result of their own personal experience as victims of texting and driving accidents in cars.

For instance, Fawcett was injured when his car was T-boned in the middle of an intersection after a woman ran a red light while she was texting. Fortunately, his injuries weren’t serious.

However, the number of texting & driving auto accidents that continue to occur in Nashville and elsewhere in Tennessee illustrates how much work still needs to be done to combat this problem.

Historically, the Volunteer State has been one of the most dangerous states in the country in terms of texting & driving and distracted driving in general. According to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, there were 24,781 distracted driving accidents in the state in 2017, plus 5,545 more in the first three months of 2018.

David Weissman’s Campaign to End Distracted Driving Car Accidents

I applaud the efforts of the firm of Raybin & Weissman—and the work of injury attorney David Weissman in particular—for its hard work in combating texting & driving. For years, David Weissman has made it his personal mission to end texting & driving, calling it a “plague” that needlessly puts all of our lives in danger whenever we’re out on the road.

If you’re interested in entering the 2019 competition you can review the rules and requirements on the firm’s scholarship page. I also encourage you to visit Raybin & Weissman’s car accidents page to learn more about other common causes of car accidents, and to find resources on how to stay safe while navigating our increasingly congested local roads in Nashville.