Beverly Hills, CA plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan loved to send and receive messages via texts. But apparently he didn’t get one message until too late: Texting while driving kills.

Body reshaper of reality TV’s Heidi Montag, rock music’s Gene Simmons and Vince Neil and modeling’s Janice Dickinson, Ryan, 50, died Monday. It seems the Jeep he was driving veered off the Pacific Coast Highway and crashed upside-down at the bottom of a 200-foot embankment.

Police say he was texting at the time of the crash. He’d just taken a photo of his dog at a stop and sent it via Twitter. But instead of putting his communications device away, he kept using it while driving — and paid the ultimate price.

Such catastrophic accidents have become common in this age of putting unnecessary texts and phone calls above the life-or-death necessities of driving a vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 6,000 Americans per year die in traffic accidents due to texting or cell phone distractions, and another half a million Americans are injured, many of them seriously.

That’s why 30 states and counting (but not yet Texas) have adopted laws banning texting while driving. California has such a law, but Dr. Ryan, like many people, either didn’t get the message or chose to disregard the texting law.

An irony is that Ryan was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash. Thus, he was obeying a law which, when first written, was decried by many as unenforceable. How can you make people wear seatbelts, and how can police know that they’re not?

But over the years the message has gotten through to millions of Americans that wearing seatbelts saves lives — and not wearing them contributes to tragedies. Now these same Americans need to get another message: Texting while driving leads to deaths and catastrophic injuries. Just look at the sad case of Dr. Frank Ryan.

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