KEY POINTS:
The injured teenage survivor of yet another driving-while-texting fatality awoke in his hospital bed yesterday to the news that his 16-year-old girlfriend was dead.
Police suspect that Sharleen Lloyd of the Bay of Plenty town of Ohope had been texting before the car she was driving veered off the road into a parked trailer near Awakeri on Thursday. She was killed instantly.
The crash, which onlookers said sounded like "exploding dynamite", snapped boyfriend Matthew Smit's seatbelt, leaving him with a broken back, serious internal injuries, facial gashes and bruises.
At least four fatal and 50 non-fatal crashes a year are a result of drivers being distracted while using cellphones, but police suspect the figure is probably much higher. That makes cellphones the second-biggest culprit, after passengers, in a list of in-vehicle distractions that cause crashes. However, while many other countries have banned drivers from using mobile phones, our Government has yet to act. Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven said he was waiting on the recommendations of the National Road Safety Committee.
Lloyd will be laid to rest in Ohope tomorrow. Smit will be unable to attend because his injuries are too serious for him to leave hospital.
Smit's father Andrew told the Herald on Sunday yesterday that his son had gone into shock on hearing that his girlfriend of eight months was dead.
He said texting while driving was partially to blame for the accident, which had left his son "pretty messed up".
"I don't like this texting while driving one bit. You've only got to take your eyes off the road for a split second," he said.
A month ago the transport safety minister said he believed it was time to ban hand-held cellphones in cars, following a coroner's finding that a man was texting behind the wheel before a crash that claimed his life.
Levin coroner Phil Comber found that Andrew Kenneth Hicks was distracted by text messages when he crashed into a power pole in Foxton on May 26. He died of head injuries as a result of the accident.
The most high-profile texting-while-driving accident involved actor Cliff Curtis, who crashed into a house at Otaki while reading a text message in 2004; he later approved of a ban.
Lloyd's mother Fiola Parsons said that while her daughter was texting at the time of the crash, another possible contributing factor was a new chihuahua puppy she had in the car, which might have distracted her.
"She could text with her hand on the wheel without even looking, but you know what dogs are like, it would have been jumping around."
However Lloyd's aunt, Dina Parsons, said her niece should not have been texting while driving as "you've only got to be distracted for a second and it can be all over".
Friends and family yesterday visited Lloyd's Ohope home to pay their respects. Described as having a zest for life, Lloyd was born and raised in Ohope and was a student at Trident College. She planned to study tourism and hospitality at polytechnic in Tauranga next year.
A keen surfer and netball player, she had planned to stay with her cousin Jamie Arararoa in Auckland's west coast beach of Piha for summer. "She was pretty and smart and always into everything. She was more like a sister than a cousin," Arararoa said.
When Parsons returned home from work on Thursday afternoon, she noticed that Lloyd's car was gone. Later that night family friends broke the bad news to her.
"I couldn't believe it had happened to my baby girl, not even when we saw the body in the funeral parlour," she said.
Cellphone bans
Thirty-five countries prohibit the use of hand-held phones while driving:
Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Chile, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, India (New Delhi only)*, Italy, Isle of Man, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Malaysia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, USA (various states).
*Prohibits use of all cellphones.
Source: Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
