If you could make yourself and the passengers in your car 23 times safer by doing one thing, would you do it?

According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, texting and driving creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving without distraction. Distracted driving caused 18 percent of all fatal crashes in 2010, and even though texting is not the only distraction that inhibits a driver’s ability to drive, it is one of the most dangerous.

While there are no federal laws governing texting and driving, most states have banned the practice. In Virginia, lawmakers in Richmond have banned texting for all drivers , and cell phone use is illegal for all school bus drivers and teenage drivers under the age of 18. This means that any driver involved in an auto accident in Virginia while texting is likely to be deemed liable.

As this powerful PSA makes clear, the risk of accident caused by texting while driving – no matter how abbreviated – is never worth the potential for catastrophic injury.