http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I54mlK0kVw

(CBS) It's one of the most dangerous things you can do - texting while driving.

There are laws against it in more than half the states. Studies show it can increase your chances of having an accident by four times. But people keep doing it.

The message is not getting through. So in Britain, there's an effort to make the message a lot more dramatic, as CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports.

It's a 30-minute video with slick production made for showing in British high schools - made to demonstrate the distracting danger of texting on a cell phone while driving.

It's also very deliberately made to shock.

The film shows numerous violent car crashes. They're cinema - not real footage. But the images are so graphic and horrific that the film was labeled for 18-and-over only when an excerpt landed on YouTube last week.

Its writer and director - who cast his own son Henry in the video - makes no apologies.

"Yes it is violent, but the reality of a fatal road accident is much more gruesome, is much more violent," said writer-director Peter Watkins Hughes. "My position on this is that if you are old enough to drive, if you are old enough to want to drive, you are old enough to be aware of the real and serious risks one places yourself in every time you get behind the wheel."

Produced last summer for the Gwent police force in south Wales, which picked up most of the almost $20,000 cost - it's called "the film that will stop you texting and driving." And it may already be working.

"As you know, this video has been viewed around the world now by 1.5 million people, and we have had e-mail after e-mail after e-mail from people saying, 'I will never ever text and drive again' - from young people," said Gwent police chief constable Mick Giannasi.

Authorities in Britain say texting while driving slows reaction time 35 percent - making it more dangerous than driving while high or drunk. Yet 48 percent drivers under 25 have done it.

The young actors in the video knew that. What they didn't know was that their work, finished last summer, would have such impact.

Jenny Davies plays the driver nicknamed cow.

"My mom cried, my mom cried a lot watching it and seeing me screaming," she said, "and a lot of my friends have been really upset by it seeing me screaming, in that much pain - as it seems, that much pain."

Amy Ingham was one of her passengers.

"If it makes people cry, then it makes people cry you know but fingers crossed that everybody watching this is going to learn something from it," Ingham said.

And if the lesson saves just one life, they say, that would be awesome.

Wow, that's intense :(
I actually started crying =/
That poor baby...

Clickable link to the youtube for the lazypants

It truly is but i think sometimes that it needs to be shown just how tragic it really is I'm actually waiting to hear from the ppolice department in wales about how much a copy of the film will cost

Christ Almight, just a bit overkill, don't you thing?

*think

Actually i don't think it is overkill. texting well driving is worse than driving drunk.

Wow -- ill have to u tube it later since I'm on my phone

Me and my friends devleoped a bad habit of textin n driving its hard to break

It started years ago yet its so easy to text n drive with out it feels naked!

yeah but think of it this way. would you drive drunk? probably not. but you text while driving and think nothing of it. texting increases your chances of being in an accident by 4 times. and your reaction time is WORSE than if you were drunk

And this right here is the sad part. Some people are so ignorant and oblivious to the fact that sending text messages while driving is ridiculous dangerous that they don't care. I guess they'll have all the time in the world to care when they're dead or they kill others and have to live with the fact they ruined and selfishly took lives... hopefully from a prison cell. I wonder what the reception is like in there?

i wish there was a "like" button for this.

I'm just hoping this will bring awareness to even one person

*thumb up* :)

probably not good. It's amazing how many people text while driving heck someone in the mall parkinglot just about hit a woman today because the idiot was texting while driving

I agree. I think ALL school kids should be forced to watch it. And college kids as well.

Yeah I read that part it increases ur chance and so on

i like it. if people are going to text and drive, they should see the consequences of it which won't be pretty. i wish they would make more movies like this, it could have saved a girl's life at my school who got ejected from her car because she wouldn't wear a seatbelt. two weeks away from her graduation

wow that's horrid. I'm actually ordering a copy of the full film and bringing it to the school board here and telling them it should be shown in EVERY school

Oh dear, the Welsh would not be pleased to read this!

Why do you say that?

the vedio was so fake...

Well no really? IT"S A FILM for god sake. like they would EVER put people through a real crash. they want to show the seriousness of it not kill people

Ok ok a lot of get the point chill

Sry my phone cut some words out -- a lot of ppl got the point*

Just annoyed that you'd make the comment that it's fake. well yeah it's fake .It's a film it's rather good when you consider that whole thing the 30 min movie was actually made with only about $20,000

Oh and it's spelled video