Twenty-one teens using a driving simulator while sending text messages or searching their MP3s slowed down, wove in an out of their lanes, and, in some cases, ran over pedestrians, according to a study presented to the Pediatric Academic Societies on Saturday, May 2. While the most significant finding was that the distracted teens wove and changed their driving speed dramatically (other teens ran over pedestrians as well at a slightly lower rate), those behaviors can clearly pose a danger both to the drivers and others around them. "It's good for us to increase community awareness that this can be a problem," said LaPrecious Harrold, M.D., a resident physician at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) and Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk, Va. This study comes as legislators nationwide debate how and whether to regulate texting-while-driving. The study restricted itself to teens, a population of drivers already at significantly risk. Motor vehicle accidents are leading cause of death for people between 16 and 20, accounting for more than 5,000 deaths each year, according to the CDC.

Alone in a room in his home in Bonn, Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper. As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters. That became Hillebrand's magic number -- and set the standard for one of today's most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging.