Our own TADD intern Margot was initially inspired to combat distracted driving at her high school after she saw an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show on the subject.

Oprah is making it her personal mission to bring attention to the problem, and in today’s New York Times, she writes a piece pleading for change. Here’s an excerpt:

But we are hesitant to change. I saw this firsthand when I instituted a policy at my company that forbids employees from using their phones for company business while driving. I heard countless stories about how hard it was for people to stop talking and texting while driving. Everyone is busy. Everyone feels she needs to use time in the car to get things done. But what happened to just driving?

It was difficult for my employees to adjust, but they have. Life is more precious than taking a call or answering an e-mail message. Because even though we think we can handle using our cellphone in the car, the loss of thousands of lives has shown we can’t.

So many issues that we have to deal with seem beyond our control: natural disasters, child predators, traffic jams. Over the years, I’ve done shows on just about all of them. But this is a real problem we can do something about and get immediate results. All we have to do is hang up or switch off. It really is that simple. Once we do that, not another son or daughter will have to die because someone was on the phone and behind the wheel — and just not paying attention.