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SPRINGFIELD — When Bruce Berg’s daughter came home one day during her sophomore year at Springfield High School, she told him about a seminar students attended on the dangers of drinking and driving.

“Did they talk about texting and driving?” Berg asked her.

“They kind of touched on it,” said Sophia Berg, now 18 and a 2015 graduate of Springfield High.

Bruce Berg, 61, a longtime commercial photographer based in Springfield, did some research and was astonished to find news reports that said teenage texting and driving is more dangerous than teen drinking and driving and is now the top killer of teenagers in the nation.

One statistic he found a couple of years ago said 11 teenagers die every week in the United States from crashes that involve texting and driving.

“That’s a horrendous statistic,” Berg says. “I know how I’m tempted (to text while driving) and I see teens do it all the time.

The federal government’s website for distracted driving, distraction.gov, says 3,154 people were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers (texting, talking on phone, eating, reading) in 2013, the most recent year statistics are available. And teenage drivers represent the largest proportion of distracted drivers (10 percent) involved in all fatal crashes.

In Oregon, 11 people, including two in Lane County, were killed in crashes involving cellphones in the four-year period from Jan. 1, 2010 (when driving while using a cellphone became illegal). But the numbers are “highly unreported,” says Shelley Snow, strategic communications coordinator for the state Transportation Department, because law enforcement officials only know if a cellphone was in use if the driver reports it or it’s witnessed and reported.

So, if you’ve seen a couple of billboards, one in Eugene and one in Springfield, recently, that picture local high school students and the words: “PLZ JOIN US. DON’T TXT + DRV!”, Berg is the reason why.

Actually, this is the third straight year Berg has persuaded area businesses to donate $500 per billboard for the campaign.

And, for the first time, he’s got Lane Transit District on board this year with buses just starting to display, at no charge, high school senior portraits taken by Berg with those same words.

“Just to get the message out more,” Berg says. “Because I feel it’s not getting the attention it deserves (considering) the severity of the problem. When you text (and drive), you’re worse than a drunk driver with your ability to respond.”

The billboard on the north side of the Highway 126 Expressway, east of Interstate 5 and just before the Pioneer Parkway exit, shows images shot by Berg — for their senior portraits — of nine members of the class of 2016.

“I think it’s a really awesome campaign, because it’s really important not to be texting and driving,” says RyLee Gorham, who starts her senior year at Sheldon High School on Wednesday and is the young lady on the left end of the billboard.

Gorham, 17, has had her driver’s license for 18 months now and has an iPhone 6. But she says she does not text and drive. She has a passenger read her messages to her while she’s driving, she says.

Melissa Baker, who starts her senior year at Willamette High School on Thursday and is also featured on the Springfield billboard, doesn’t drive and is not sure when she’ll get her license.

And, she says, she never rides with someone who’s texting and driving.

“No,” Baker says. “Because I yell at them (if they do). I take their phone while they’re driving.”

The Springfield billboard is sponsored by Nation’s Mini-Mix, a Springfield concrete company, Berg says. The company has sponsored a board all three years of his campaign.

The other billboard this year is on the south side of Randy Papé Beltline, near the Northwest Expressway. Westbound drivers see two Sheldon High School basketball players, Kobe Mitchell and Justin Herbert, on that one, sponsored by Ye Olde Pancake House in Eugene.

Mitchell’s grandparents opened the restaurant, now operated by his mother, Jackie Mitchell, in 1977.

Jackie Mitchell was more than happy to sponsor the board for $500 “because I think it’s a great thing, even though most kids don’t listen.”

She tells her children to put the phone in the backseat while they’re driving.

“I think it’s a good thing that (Berg) has kids who are known in the community doing it,” Mitchell says.

Baker agrees. The billboards are impactful because other high school students will see them and say, “Hey, those kids are cool, and they don’t text and drive,” she says.

After getting three businesses to sponsor two boards each of the past two years, support dropped off this year, says Berg, who pays the $100 installation fee himself for each billboard.

It’s also been a very difficult year for Berg and his two children — Sophia, and son Harrison, 22. Berg’s wife of 35 years, Sherri, died suddenly on June 5 of heart failure at age 57. Sophia went through with graduation festivities that night at Silke Field because, Berg says, he knows Sherri would have wanted that.

He carried on with his no-texting campaign throughout the summer and says he won’t stop with the billboards, which could come down as early as Tuesday. That is when their one month is up, although billboard company CBS Outdoor, now Outfront Media, left the boards up for an extra month two years ago at no extra charge.

“Even if I have to come up with (the money) all myself, I’m committed to doing it,” Berg says.