Maybe you recall seeing drivers education footage showing what not to do behind the wheel. Often such lessons start as fun, with a clownish actor frantically shaving, eating, consulting maps and even reading a book while doing a lousy job of driving a car. But even with a sobering punchline about car accidents, the real joke is on all of us, now that texting while driving has entered the equation.

A recent survey for Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. reveals that 19 per cent of motorists admit to texting while driving. The real amount is probably higher, since not everyone will admit doing something so stupid. In fact, another survey in Massachusetts indicates that 28 per cent of people text while driving.

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“You’re in good hands” begins a familiar insurance company slogan. To be sure, insurance providers like to be viewed that way — as reliable, helpful protectors of your financial security and peace of mind.

But though some insurance companies certainly provide such service, others may betray a resolve to keep every dime they get from policy holders, even when such money rightfully should be paid out.

Take Great American Insurance Co., which is trying to wriggle out of a potential $25 million liability for a 2007 Houston office fire in which three people died.

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Again, a helicopter accident has taken a terrible toll — for the third time recently in the Houston area.

On Thursday, three persons died — and another two remain missing — after a helicopter ferrying workers to an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico crashed into the Gulf waters. The company which leased the helicopter reported that the helicopter was missing Thursday morning, and the Coast Guard later found three bodies and debris.

The accident occurred near land — only about two miles from the coast of Sabine Pass. The helicopter’s destination was an oil drilling platform about 18 miles off the coast. The Coast Guard sent search boats and a rescue helicopter to look for survivors.

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It’s been almost three months since Hurricane Ike devastated the Texas Gulf Coast, and hard-hit residents still stagger under the weight of enormous costs to restore their homes. The culprits? In too many cases, it’s balky insurance companies, which delay or deny payments in order to keep the money for themselves, drawing interest on it in the process while homeowners suffer. But even when an insurance company does issue a check, it seems some Texans are finding it tough to collect.

That’s because too many insurance companies are issuing recovery checks to the mortgage company holding the lien, not to the homeowner. Or sometimes the checks are written out to both the mortgage company and the homeowner. But often that check goes only to the mortgage company, which cashes it and keeps the money, or at least slows down its dispersal to desperate homeowners.

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Again, an ATV accident has taken a tragic toll. Former NBA standout Rodney Rogers has been paralyzed from the neck down after suffering injuries in an ATV accident in his home state of North Carolina.

Rogers, who played 12 seasons in the NBA, won the league’s Sixth Man Award in 2000 for his contributions to the Phoenix Suns. Before his professional career, he was a star player for Wake Forest University, earning All America honors. He retired from professional basketball in 2005.

Rogers, 37, reportedly was riding an ATV, or all terrain vehicle, on private property north of Raleigh, N.C., when he fell off or was thrown from the vehicle. In the process, his spinal cord was severely injured. Rogers is now in Atlanta to start a rehabilitation process.

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Almost three months since Hurricane Ike roared and roiled over the Houston area, many residents are still stuck with repair needs — and that’s too often because their insurance provider whom they paid in full for coverage has resisted, delayed or denied a fair settlement.

According to a report in today’s Houston Chronicle, more than 1,700 Texans so far have complained to the Texas Department of Insurance about balky insurance companies which refuse to pay, delay paying or offer a only small fraction of what they rightly owe their customers.

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If you are among the one million Americans who still take the brand name drug Avandia, you may want to join many others who have stopped taking it. That’s because yet another study of rosiglitazone, the drug used in Avandia, again has been shown to increase death rates in patients, particularly elderly patients with diabetes.

A new study by Harvard Medical School researchers, as reported this week in The New York Times, found that patients who took rosiglitazone had 15 per cent higher death rates than those who took pioglitazone, a comparable drug. The study also found a 13 per cent higher incidence of congestive heart failure in those taking rosiglitazone.

Both drugs are taken by persons with diabetes to help control their body sugar by enhancing their sensitivity to insulin, and the drugs often are taken along with other diabetes medicine. One goal is to enable patients to fend off taking insulin.

The trade-off is that both rosiglitazone and pioglitazone have been found to be dangerous by some researchers, including those who conducted a major study for the New England Journal of Medicine released last year.

The European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association both have eliminated rosiglitazone from their recommended treatments for type 2 diabetes. Also, consumer watchdog organization Public Citizen has urged the Food and Drug Administration to band rosiglitazone, not only for the heart problems it causes, but also because it may produce vision impairment, liver failure and other maladies.

Meanwhile, an estimated one million Americans continue to take rosiglitazone, often in the form of the brand name drug Avandia. If you are one of them, and if you have suffered any harmful effects as a result, contact a physician immediately. Then notify an Avandia lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates.

An experienced pharmaceutical lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates also offers a free case review.

Call an Avandia attorney with Jim S. Adler & Associates today at 1-800-505-1414 or fill out the firm’s online form for a free case review. Then launch the process of gaining your full and just financial recovery for your medical bills, your lost wages and your pain and suffering due to negative side effects of Avandia.

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Millions of Americans enjoy the rugged thrills of riding the little go-getters known as ATVs. But if you’re one of them, do you know what you drive? Is it an ATV — an all terrain vehicle –  or perhaps a UTV, a utility terrain vehicle? And do you have legal protection if such a vehicle fails you and causes an injury?

While ATV is an umbrella term for the small off-road recreational vehicles whose sales have topped seven million units, Yamaha would rather call its Rhino a UTV.

Why? Because designating the Rhino differently relieves Yamaha from federal safety standards applied to ATVs. And because muddying the waters with rotating terms confuses regulators with the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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“Crash!” It’s a sudden sound for a sudden event — and often a tragic one, especially when it comes in a car accident.

Innocent people die each day on America’s streets and highways. Many may have been safe, cautious drivers with a good record. But when other drivers on the road are rampaging — by speeding, drinking and driving recklessly — even safe drivers are in danger, including a woman in Detroit this week.

She was minding her own business, riding in a car, when another vehicle, which was involved in a street race, slammed into her Saturn Ion. The blameless woman died soon after at a hospital.

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Now that many people have been killed or injured due to cell phone accidents — killed by drivers being distracted while calling or texting — the inevitable but gallingly slow process of legislatively addressing the problem is proceeding.

In Texas alone this week, some progress has been seen in communities around Houston, as well as in the capital city of Austin.

Austin’s public safety task force this week passed a resolution directing Austin City Council to have its city manager develop regulations to prohibit text-messaging while driving a car. The city manager and his staff are expected to create such a proposal and give it to city council members for consideration.

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