There are a lot of awful ways in which a person can die, but the most tragic ones are always those that were preventable. In the case of text messaging while driving, one of the most frightening growing trends among American drivers, we’re seeing an increasing number of deaths that never needed to happen. In general, cars keep getting safer and safer, but as long as those behind the wheel are texting instead of paying attention to the road, it won’t matter how safe a car a Lexus dealer sells you. Every text negates all the hard work safety engineers are doing.

Here’s the reality—almost six billion texts are sent and received over the course of a day, and one in eight drivers admits to texting while behind the wheel of an automobile. For anybody willing to do the math, we’re looking at somewhere around 750 million instances per day where drivers aren’t paying attention to the road.

No wonder so many people are getting into accidents. If that many drivers are more focused on words on a screen instead of cars on the road, there’s bound to be some serious repercussions.

That being what it is, it’s also no wonder that so many people are advocating for serious changes. As of June 2011, 34 states had completely banned texting while driving a vehicle, and it shouldn’t take long for the other 16 to jump on board, as well. Studies have shown that a driver has about 3 seconds to react to an emergency, while sending and receiving texts removes the driver’s eye from the road for 4-5 seconds at a time. You can see how this would be a problem, and how everyone from Oprah to the president has worked to make sure this happens less and less as the technology grows more and more popular.

No Lexus dealer in Essex wants to sell a vehicle they know could harm someone, and we do our best to make sure customers get the safest cars money can buy. But buying safety doesn’t do a whole lot when the operator of the vehicle isn’t being safe themselves. Keep your eyes on the road and off of your cell phone. We’ll all be a lot better off because of it.