Cherry Hill East’s “Txt L8r Drive Now” club helps to remind kids of the dangers that come with driving while being on your phone. The two club presidents, Chloe Garber (‘19) and Lindsay Weinberg (‘19), both feel that the message of the club is becoming more and more important as the number of kids who give in to the dangerous habit of texting while behind the wheel increases.

“Text Later Drive Now is a campaign that is meant to raise awareness for distracted driving and how serious of a problem has become” said Garber.

It is estimated that eleven teens die everyday as a result of texting and driving. Most teens admit to knowing and understand the dangers of texting and driving, yet still continue to do it.  

Weinberg said, “[texting and driving] has become a really big issue in the past couple of years since social media’s becoming so important in our everyday lives.”

The club’s main focus is to remind young drivers to be safe on the roads at all times and to always avoid using their phone while driving. The club utilizes meetings, fundraisers, and tweets as methods of spreading their message.

The club has about 40 members and within those forty members are fifteen leaders. Six different subunits make up the club: in school events, merchandise, public outreach, finance, community events, and social media. Two or three members are assigned to be the leaders of one of the subunits and they are responsible for managing and reporting back the ideas and progress of their specific unit.

“We put the forty members into different groups and the leaders are supposed to direct the group and guide them to be on track and then they can bring their ideas to us and we can give them feedback and help them get organized” said Weinberg.

The club normally meets every day six in Lecture Hall one, but sometimes the meetings are for the leaders only. The advisors are Mr. James, Mr. Speller, and Mr. Smith, who are all drivers education teachers.

The club is currently working on making t-shirts to help get their message out more efficiently and they also have a few other fundraisers in the works.

“While we have people working in the school to get the message out we also have people working outside of the community. We are currently working on some dine-and-donates right now and we are going to do a special halftime event at some of the basketball games” said Garber.

The “Txt L8r Drive Now” club is helping to remind young drivers to be safer on the roads and to always avoid using their cell phone while driving which is a very important lesson to be learned this day in age. For more information and reminders from this club, you can follow them on Twitter @CHE_TxtL8r.