You might have heard something about how dangerous it is to text and drive, but judging by what I saw in traffic this morning, the message hasn’t really hit home for a lot of South Africans.

America seems to have the same problem, which is why police in a small town in the States decided to share some footage of exactly what can happen if you aren’t paying attention to your surroundings.

In Berlin, Massachusetts – population 2 866 in 2010 – a woman decide to multi-task. While distracted on her phone, she lost control of her vehicle.

Ryan Hass, who was driving behind her car, captured the accident on his dashcam.

When the pole snapped, the pole in the middle of the road was bouncing around.

I could have hit the pole that was with the live wires.

The driver walked away from the accident with minor injuries.

The local authorities shared the video to their Facebook page as a warning to motorists not to text and drive.

Berlin Police Chief Tom Galvin has the following to say about the accident:

You look at the car rolling over, you look at the pole coming down – there was so much potential for serious injury.

We often don’t get to see the reality of what this causes, so we felt it was important to get that video feed out there so people can see what happens and really see the dangers of texting.

You can see the footage of the crash here:

It’s a minor miracle that the driver escaped with only a small cut on her head.

Here’s the BBC with the video and some pictures of the aftermath:

Drive safe, people. That text can wait.

[source:bbc]