A Massachusetts teenager this week became the first person in the state convicted of causing a traffic death while texting.
Aaron Deveau, 18, was found guilty on charges of vehicular homicide, texting while driving, and negligent operation of a motor vehicle, following a 2011 crash that killed a New Hampshire man, according to CNN. He was sentenced to one year in jail, and had his license revoked for 15 years.
On Feb. 20, 2011, in a matter of seconds, Deveau's car crossed the center line of a Haverhill, Mass., street, crashing head-on with the vehicle of 55-year-old Donald Bowley Jr. of Danville, N.H.
Bowley's girlfriend, Luz Roman, 59, was in the car at the time, and suffered serious injuries. Bowley died March 10, 2011, after being taken off of life support.
"I made a mistake," Deveau said during Wednesday's trial. "If I could take it back, I would take it back."
The Massachusetts Highway Safety Division issued a ban on all handheld cell phone use while driving, making it a primary offense for all drivers to send or read text messages while operating a moving vehicle.
The teen actually earned two and a half years behind bars, according to CNN, but Deveau will instead serve one year concurrently on both charges, while the balance is suspended for five years.
During the trial, prosecutors showed the jury the then-17-year-old high school student's phone records, which showed that he sent 193 text messages the day of the crash, including some in the minutes leading up to the crash, and dozens after it, Reuters reported.
Now Deveau will face the consequences of a practice in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported teens are increasingly engaging.
According to the 2011 National Youth Risk Behavior Study released today, one in three high school students texted or emailed while driving a vehicle in the 30 days prior to participation in the survey.
"These findings … show that despite improvements (including more teens wearing seatbelts), there is a continued need for government agencies, community organizations, schools, parents, and other community members to work together to address the range of risk behaviors prevalent among our youth," Howell Wechsler, director of CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, said in a press release.
Last month, meanwhile, a judge found that a woman could not be held responsible for texting a driver who crashed while responding to her message, the AP reported.
In February, the Department of Transportation proposed guidelines that would block all in-vehicle communications by a driver, including texting, dialing, Internet browsing, and even entering a GPS address by hand. That came two months after the NHTSA called for a nationwide ban on the use of personal electronic devices while driving—including talking on the phone, as well as sending and reading text messages.
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