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Teen Was Texting Every 90 Seconds Before Fatal Crash

By Michael Inbar -- MSNBC, TODAY Contributor

Credit: TODAY Show

he wreckage of the car Taylor Sauer was driving when she was killed. Her parents are lobbying for new laws to prevent tragedies like this one.

March 5, 2012 Updated Mar 5, 2012 at 9:59 AM PDT

Bright, outgoing college teen Taylor Sauer proved in the last minutes of her life she knew right from wrong — but still committed a fatal mistake.

Sauer was making a late-night, four-hour drive from the Utah State University campus in Logan to visit her folks in Caldwell, Idaho. She passed the time messaging a pal on Facebook about the Denver Broncos football team. But she stopped short, writing in her final missive, "I can't discuss this now. Driving and facebooking is not safe! Haha."

Moments later, Sauer, going more than 80 mph, slammed into a tanker truck that was slowly creeping up a hill at 15 mph. She was killed instantly; investigators saw no signs that she applied the brakes before the fatal crash. And in checking her cell phone records, they learned Sauer was posting about every 90 seconds during her drive.

"I think she was probably (texting) to stay awake, she was probably tired," Taylor's dad, Clay Sauer, told Ann Curry on TODAY Monday. "But that's not a reason to do it, and the kids think they're invincible. To them, (texting) is not distracting, they're so proficient at texting, that they don't feel it's distracted driving."

Clay and Shauna Sauer, still grieving over their 18-year-old daughter's Jan. 12 death, have become lobbyists in their home state to urge the state legislature to pass a ban on texting while driving. Idaho is one of 13 states in the U.S. that has no such law in place.

Just weeks after Taylor's death, the family testified before the Idaho State Legislature as it considers a texting-while-driving ban, a bill that has been shot down before in the state.

Poignantly, Taylor's 11-year-old sister told the legislature that Taylor "would never be her bridesmaid," and mom Shauna told the assembly, "What if that one person was your daughter?"

The state has an inattentive driving law on the books, which some lawmakers say covers texting, but Shauna Sauer noted a driver must be visibly witnessed by police breaking a driving law to be pulled over.

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