Texting while driving turns fatal

"Where u at"

That was the last text message by Mariah West, who died at 18 when she skidded in traffic and flipped into the oncoming lane. She was texting at the time, says New York Times.

She is among the people who appear in a nearly 11-minute documentary developed by AT&T to warn young people about the dangers of texting and driving, the daily claimed.

The wireless company planned to release the video today, before New Year's Eve. The timing is aimed, the company says, at showing that texting and driving deserves to be considered as dangerous as drunken driving. The documentary includes intense, sometimes disturbing, images, including that of Ms West, as she spent her last minutes alive on a breathing tube.

"Our goal is to help make texting while driving as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving," said Gail Torreano, a senior vice president with AT&T. "We want this to be in every school in the country and for teenagers to know a text message is not worth a life."

The daily cited research figures from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. It shows that motorists who text face a 23 times greater risk of crash or near crash. Other wireless carriers, like Verizon Wireless, in the last year have increased efforts to warn about the risks of texting and driving.