In California, a woman was recently sentenced to six years in prison for crashing her car into a line of stopped vehicles while she was text messaging. The crash incinerated another woman alive in her car.

I know, s ome t ime s it's just really, really important that you text somebody while you're driving. You've done it lots before and nothing's happened, except for a few close calls. You're young, you're smart, you can thumb your Blackberry in your sleep. So what's the big deal about texting while driving?

Well, let me explain how the law of averages will eventually come to stab you in the back. Researchers at Virginia Tech University's Transportation Institute found people who text behind the wheel are 23 times more likely to crash when they're texting.

That's about like being DUI with three times the legal limit of alcohol.

The law of averages says that you'll usually get away with it, taking your eyes and brain off driving, maybe for years before you kill or injure somebody. If you're lucky. That California woman will spend the next six years in prison for thinking she could get away with it forever.

In the Virginia Tech study, cameras continuously observed the drivers of both light vehicles and trucks for over six million miles. Findings demonstrated that drivers who texted while driving were 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident.

Studies show that texters take they eyes off the road for five seconds, average, for each text sent or received. A lot of bad stuff can happen on the road in five seconds if you're not watching, and eventually it's going to happen to you or someone you love.

But, you say, it hasn't happened to me -- yet. I'm a good driver and an excellent texter, and I've only had to slam on the brakes a few times when I was texting. No biggie. You're just old.

Yes, and I'd like to get older. I've already been hit by a distracted teenager once, nearly hit just recently by a distracted grown man, and I've dodged more blind flying fools than I can count.

The heat is growing. Now 14 states have passed laws making it illegal to text while you're driving, and U.S. senators just introduced federal legislation to make it a national ban. Insurance companies are wising up, too. When you cause a wreck, now they subpoena cell phone records to see if you were texting or yakking when you crashed, and are successfully denying claims because you were "driving impaired."

But odds are, that won't happen to you for a long time. For some, though, it will happen, and more than ever, judges are sending them to prison for it.

When your odds run out, when you keep on texting and you hit someone, maybe then my words will sink in. When they haul away the people you injured in ambulances, or when the police cuff you and haul you away, or when the judge sends you to jail no matter how much your mama cries, I hope you'll remember this column and realize that old dude was right.