Teens. Cars. Cell phones.
The mix is as combustible as gas, fire and oxygen. And the result can be just as deadly.
Clinging to their social life preservers, teens are littering roads with mangled car parts from crashes where a cell phone was a factor.
But dozens of states across the country are starting to do something about the problem.
In Kansas and Missouri, legislatures this year passed laws targeting teen cell phone use. The new laws would:
Ban anyone 21 or younger from sending a text message while driving in Missouri. The law starts Aug. 28. It carries a fine up to $200 and two points would be assessed against a Missouri driver's license.
Prohibit anyone under 16½ in Kansas from using a cell phone while driving with the exception of emergencies. The new law starts Jan. 1. The law is part of Kansas' new graduated driver's license program.
The measures come at a time when cell phones are grabbing headlines, not just in highway crashes but on the country's railways as well.
Last week, a 25-year-old man driving on Interstate 29 apparently was texting when he slammed into the back of a St. Joseph, Mo., patrol car, knocking it into another squad car. Two officers were sent to the hospital with injuries.
A 19-year-old northeast Kansas woman who was killed in a car accident near Manhattan two weekends ago was texting while driving, investigators said. Ashley Umscheid, of Wheaton, was driving her 1995 Ford Ranger on Kansas 18
when she entered the median, overcorrected and flipped the vehicle.
Those wrecks came just weeks after a 24-year-old trolley driver in Boston rear-ended another trolley while texting his girlfriend. The crash sent 49 passengers to the hospital,
"I think it's almost an epidemic in this country that people think it's a good practice to basically be on a typewriter in your car," said state Sen. Ryan McKenna, who backed the texting ban in Missouri.
Texting for novice drivers is already banned in 10 states, and cell phones are banned for young drivers in 21 states and Washington, D.C. Legislatures in 24 states considered an estimated 51 bills this year that would have toughened cell phone laws.
While traffic safety experts generally consider cell phones a driving distraction for anyone, they are viewed as an even deadlier temptation for teens.
Imbued with a sense of invincibility and an over-confidence in their driving skills, teens tend to underestimate the risk that cell phones — and especially texting — pose on the highway, experts say.
"Teens have a distraction problem already. Now you're going to add cell phones into the mix?" said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Kansas listed driver distraction, especially among teens, as one of the top issues facing American transportation. They noted that a cell phone increases the chances of a young adult wrecking by up to 700 percent.
Missouri and Kansas have been tracking cell phone-related crashes for six or seven years.
Missouri had 451 cell-phone related crashes involving 15- to 19-year-olds last year, the most since 2003. Four were fatal, including a fiery crash in northeast Missouri last September that killed two, records show.
Kansas had 111 teen wrecks where a cell phone contributed. Only one was a fatality. Police said an 18-year-old in Wichita ran into a tree in while texting in snowy conditions.
As significant as the issue may be, experts question whether laws singling out an age group — or just a behavior like sending text messages — will do anything to curb the rising number of crashes involving teens and cell phones.
The insurance institute last year studied a cell phone ban for drivers under 18 in North Carolina. Researchers found that teens leaving high school in the afternoon changed little before and after the ban started.
About 11 percent of teen drivers were seen using phones before the law. It increased to 12 percent after the ban, the study found.
Rader, the insurance institute spokesman, said laws restricting cell phone use don't appear to be effective. He pointed out that most teens interviewed in North Carolina knew about the cell phone ban, but didn't think it was vigorously enforced.
"If drivers don't believe they are likely to be spotted and ticketed, they're unlikely to change their behavior," he said.
Another study of a ban on handheld cell phones for New York drivers turned up similar results. Cell phone use dropped immediately after the ban started, but a year later it had picked up again.
"As soon as the publicity died down, cell phone use went back up to almost where it was before," Rader said.
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