Bloom always can see it in their eyes when the teenagers get to the paragraph about the severed arm flung from a car with the fingers still wrapped around a cell phone.

"I tell them, 'Every time you're tempted to take a call or send a text, visualize that lady's arm,'  " said Bloom, who runs the Bloom School of Driving in Groveport.

As federal, state and local legislators look into outlawing texting on the road, driving instructors and student activists already are trying to get drivers to break bad cell-phone habits.

Recent studies have shown that texting drivers are anywhere from six to 23 times more likely to crash than undistracted drivers.

The Bexley City Council is expected to vote Tuesday on a texting ban. Cleveland already prohibits drivers from texting, and 14 states have bans. Ohio has several suggestions on the table.

Critics of the proposals note that distracted driving already is illegal in Ohio. Police chiefs have said that it could be difficult to enforce.

Although opinion polls say most drivers think texting while driving should be banned, that doesn't mean they have the willpower to stop themselves from doing it.

About 80 percent of Americans support a ban on texting while driving, and about 67 percent favor restrictions on cell-phone calls while driving, according to a Nationwide Insurance poll released a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, in a Nationwide study last year, a third of drivers 30 or younger admitted that they had texted while driving. About 18 percent of Americans of all ages said they did.

Capital University student Ashley Short doesn't, not anymore.

She said she never really gave texting a second thought. That is, until she caused a five-car accident on I-71 her freshman year because she was texting her sister.

"My timing was off and I rear-ended someone," she said. "Somebody went to the hospital. I mean, no one was hurt really bad, but I don't text and drive now."

Nobody ever talked about cell phones in her driving class, Short said.

Police in Great Britain, where both texting and cell-phone calls behind the wheel are illegal, have employed the age-old strategy of trying to scare students straight.

Shards of glass crunch, blood splatters and necks snap back as heads shoot through windows in a public-service announcement created by a Welsh police department. Fictional teenager Cassie sobs as her friends, an infant and other drivers are motionless around her after Cassie's texting causes her to enter the wrong lane.

Councilman Jed Morison, who introduced the Bexley proposal, said he'd like to see state legislation include provisions to make texting a mandatory part of drivers' education. The British video could be a useful tool, he said.

A group of St. Francis DeSales High School students on the North Side filmed their own fake crash for a class project.

Eric Glasstetter, who graduated this year, said they came up with the idea after a close call. One of the team members was texting behind the wheel.

"He kind of drifted left of center and a car was coming," Glasstetter said. "We all kind of were like, 'Hey, what are you doing?'

"He cut back right in time, and we realized this is really dangerous."

The Ohio chapter of Students Against Destructive Decisions -- formerly Students Against Drunk Driving -- plans to launch an anti-texting campaign this year. Student representatives are meeting at Bloom's school next month to come up with a curriculum to take into Ohio classrooms.

Last week, Bloom had teenage employees demonstrate how well drivers do on a driving course while trying to text. A Black GMC Envoy jerked and squealed as it wound up completely in the wrong lane.

"People don't take driving seriously," Bloom said. "They think driving is like plugging into a couch and watching a TV show. It's not."

egibson@dispatch.com