Srry, cn't txt rt now. i'm drvng. no LOL mattr. L8r.

As a dozen Pearl City High School students learned yesterday, a busy thumb can lead to serious consequences on the road.

The students spent the morning in the Aloha Stadium parking lot testing their driving skills amid rising distractions — loud music, eating, rowdy conversation and, yes, texting — meant to simulate the sort of potentially life-threatening but all-too-common real-life driving conditions with which teenagers often surround themselves.

The three-hour teen distracted-driver course was sponsored by Allstate as part of a national effort to address the problem of distracted driving among teens.

According to data compiled by the insurance company, car crashes rank as the No. 1 killer of American teens, with nearly 5,000 teens killed and 300,000 injured each year — 77 percent due to driver error.

In addition to raising awareness of the dangers, the teen distracted driver courses are also intended to build support for the Safe Teen and Novice Uniform Protection Act, a federal bill that would create national graduated driver licensing standards for young drivers.

In Hawai'i, drivers under the age of 18 are required to complete a three-stage graduated driver's licensing program.

"Hawai'i has good GDL laws," said Allstate spokeswoman Katherine Powell. "We're trying to work with Congress to standardize these laws."

At yesterday's class, students from Pearl City teacher Gay Ching's driver's education course got a hands-on — and sometimes off — demonstration of how seemingly innocuous distractions can lead to deadly situations on the road.

The students started by driving through a series of cones at 20 mph. On successive runs, the students had to drive the course while performing everyday (but ill-advised) tasks such as opening a bag of cookies or texting. Parents added to the distraction by talking loudly and changing radio stations.

"About 80 percent of accidents could have been avoided if the driver had just one second more of response time," said Dave Miller, an instructor with the Seattle-based Swerve Driving School, which administers the classes.

"The students can see that they don't drive as well with these distractions," Miller said. "By taking their eyes off the road for just a second, they're already knocking down cones. It's an eye-opener for them because they realize that in the real world, they'd be hitting a bystander or another vehicle, not a cone."

Pearl City junior Christine Chong said the exercise was both fun and scary.

"When you hit a cone, it's like 'Oh my God, I just hit a person,' " she said. "I'll recall this and apply it the next time I drive."

Ching, the driver's education teacher, said she and a cadre of other educators are working to offer the course in high schools statewide.

Joyce Manalo accompanied her daughter Yukie to the class. She said the state's graduated driver's licensing laws and the Pearl City driver's education class are producing positive results, even for her own driving.

"I think it's great when my daughter reminds me not to put on makeup or talk on the speaker phone when I'm driving," Manalo said. "She's so attentive and aware of what's going on. ... (Graduated driver's licensing) is a great law because I don't want either of my daughters being a statistic."