15-years seems pretty excessive for involuntary manslaughter. Also, I find the phrase "[getting] what they deserve" quite objectionable. It has a connotation of meting out justice. But putting some dumb kid (or dumb adult) in jail for a decade and a half does not bring back the dead, nor does it somehow compensate for the loss of a life. Too often are the concepts of vengeance and justice conflated in our society; desiring one of them is a vice & common human failing, desiring the other is a virtuous ideal.
I wonder if your reaction would the same if your wife/daughter/sister/mother were the one killed by a texting driver. Would you feel that 15 years in jail would even begin to compensate the victim for the loss of the remainder of their life, not to mention the emotional pain and suffering endured by everyone they left behind?
Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die. -- C.S. Lewis