A rocket scientist has created a way to stop drivers from texting while behind the wheel.

Scott Tibbitts, an entrepreneur and chemical engineer who built motors for NASA, was moved to help with distracted driving when a business colleague, Dave Sueper, was killed in 2008 on his way to a meeting with Tibbitts; he was struck and killed by a distracted teenage driver.

Tibbitts became determined to find a way to prevent other deaths from happening due to drivers distracted by their mobile devices.

"There has gotta be something that will fix this technically," Tibbitts said according to Yahoo. "And this feeling -- it just wouldn't let go."

The result of his efforts has been Groove, a small device that plugs into a port of the vehicle under the steering wheel and connects the car to the Internet (most cars made after 1996 have this capability(. Once the driver has registered with Groove, the device can detect within seconds that the phone, and driver, are in the car and notifies the person's phone carrier, allowing them to block incoming distractions.

Once the car stops moving for a certain period of time, the carrier is contacted again to lift the block, and any missed messages appear on the phone, so nothing is missed.

Tibbitts and his new company Katasi are working to gain cooperation for Groove from the largest mobile service providers.

"Our goal is to have every carrier on board with Groove, providing the capability to limit distractions before they get to the phone when a subscriber is driving," Tibbitts said.

Cell phones are involved in 1.6 million automobile crashes each year, causing nearly half a million injuries and 6,000 deaths, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Texting while driving has replaced drinking while driving as the leading cause of teen vehicular deaths, accounting for 20 percent of all teenage highway fatalities in the U.S.

A video interview with Katie Couric explaining how Groove works can be seen below: