Texas lawmakers know they must act, but how is the big question. Our state leads the nation in alcohol-related traffic deaths, and Dallas County is the nation’s third-worst for per capita drunk driving fatalities. Such tragic distinctions cannot continue.

One huge problem is that many drunk driving fatalities are caused by multiple offenders — people who already have been arrested as a drunk driver, but keep driving drunk anyway. While repeat offenders represent only 20 per cent of those arrested for drunk driving, they are a very dangerous one-fifth. How can they be rehabilitated — or kept from driving?

A recent Dallas Morning News report said Texas lawmakers can continue passing stricter laws to keep drunk drivers off streets, but that such laws haven’t worked well to date. Another option is to lessen financial penalties to drunk drivers, which would lead to fewer offenders opting for prison, rather than probation which includes substance abuse treatment.

One state senator wants a law which automatically and permanently revokes the license of anyone convicted of a second DUI offense. Sound extreme? Ask the suffering survivors of the 1,269 innocent Texans who were killed by drunk drivers in 2008 and since then, or the many thousands who suffered catastrophic injuries due to DUI car crash accidents.

Critics say this would only lead to more and more drunk drivers operating a vehicle without a license. For now, drunk drivers’ licenses are suspended for various amounts of time before being reinstated.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has other proposals, including adding more sobriety checkpoints and requiring ignition interlock devices to be installed in the vehicles of those who have driven drunk. Such devices analyze a person’s breath to determine if they are drunk and disable the car if that is the case.

We can’t know which measures Texas legislators will adopt, but one thing is clear: They must act. Otherwise they are tolerating the intolerable, and Texas’ grisly distinction as the America’s drunk driving capital will continue.

Jim S. Adler & Associates strongly supports MADD and other campaigns to fight drunk driving car accidents.

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According to Houston’s Fox 26 TV, Harris County residents are more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than those of any other highly-populous county in the United States. (Harris County ranks third, with more than 4 million residents.)

This sobering threat to public safety is why local law enforcement agencies are gearing up to bring down the number of drunk drivers. They’re doing this via a multi-agency crackdown. Through Labor Day weekend, law officers will be working overtime to spot drunk drivers and get them off our roads, streets and highways.

Another part of the campaign is Choose Your Ride. This program emphasizes that those who drink should do anything but drive a vehicle. Instead, they are urged to take a cab or a bus, or ride with a sober friend or designated driver. Otherwise, they may wind up riding with a police officer — to jail.

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Across America, disgruntled drivers are leading a backlash against red light cameras, which remotely spot red-light runners who are notified by mail of their traffic violation. It seems these drivers dislike the fact that cities “use” such system for revenue streams.

Oh, so that’s what it’s about? It’s not about drivers being peeved that they were caught?

If revenue streams were a good reason for discontinuing such cameras, why draw the line? Should no one get a traffic fine for any violation — ever — because that would enhance a city’s revenue streams? Of course, then no one would be punished, and rampant law-breaking on our roads would cause more traffic accidents.

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Why should we get mad about drunk drivers, like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)? Why should we have zero tolerance toward drunk drivers, pushing for more and stronger laws? Why are drunk driving car wreck accidents like a war against America? And why should anything change?

The answer to each question is simple: Drunk drivers are slaughtering us. They’ve been doing so virtually since autos were born, and though death numbers have risen and fallen, they’ve never disappeared. Put simply: Drunks kill — and isn’t that reason enough to do something about it?

Yet for many, news of another drunk driving fatality seems routine and, unless a loved one was killed, acceptable. Drunk drivers seem to be just a fact of life. But not all facts are unalterable.

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The Houston Chronicle’s new study of Houston area traffic accidents ended with this assessment by the Texas Transportation Institute: As drivers in the state’s largest city, with 83 million miles traveled daily, our “margin of error is extremely small.”

You could be doing everything right — wearing your seat belt, signaling when you change lines, obeying the speed limit, setting aside your cell phone — and still have a fatal car accident. That’s because it only takes a moment’s inattention or a single mistake –by you or another driver — to cause a car wreck or traffic tragedy.

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As the largest of America’s 48 contiguous states, Texas likes to boast that it’s big in everything. But the state can’t brag about this: ranking in the top 10 for both America’s deadliest DUI and deadliest speeding states for a car crash accident. That’s according to Reader’s Digest magazine, which assessed recent data on road and bridge conditions, congestion, spending on roads and overall safety.

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The following is a guest blog by Dolan Law Offices of Chicago, IL.

In the 20th Century, seatbelt laws and speed limit laws saved lives. While not everyone wears seatbelts or obeys the speed limit because states require them to do so, these laws educated many people and encouraged safe behavior.

In the 21st Century, Texas and other states are faced with additional driving problems that are making the roads dangerous. The Governor’s Highway Safety Association lists several types of possible laws that could make roads safer. Texas has significant laws banning drunk driving and requiring child safety seats. However, many current Texas laws do not provide as much protection as they could for drivers. For example:

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Driving deaths overall are down in America, but could be much lower without one thing: distracted drivers who call or text at the wheel. A new report by the U.S. Department of Transportation reveals the United States had 33,963 traffic fatalities in 2009, a drop of 8.9 per cent from 2008. With driving deaths declining for 15 consecutive quarters, this also was the lowest level since 1954.

But imagine how much better it could be without the onslaught of cell phone addiction. Millions of Americans drive with one hand on the wheel — at best — while calling and texting with the other. And when only a moment’s inattention can cause a lifetime of misery, these driving distractions are among the biggest threats on our roads today.

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In the SOS over Toyota stuck accelerators causing death to innocent Americans, a new element is entering the sad and disturbing picture: EMI. That stands for electromagnetic interference, which is what some say is causing the fatal bursts of sustained acceleration.

In theory, EMI can be caused internally by components of a car’s own systems, or via cell phones or airport radar. EMI essentially disrupts or alters the electronic commands that a car should be receiving from its internal systems in order to brake, accelerate or perform other driving tasks.

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The negligence of Toyota toward innocent American consumers seems to know no end. The latest sign of Toyota putting profits over public safety is found in an internal Toyota document from July 6, 2009, in which a company executive bragged that it was saving $100 million by negotiating a limited recall for Lexus ES and Toyota Camry vehicles for accelerator malfunctions.

That limited recall may have saved Toyota millions at the time, but Toyota’s failure to address the problem fully led to more stuck accelerator car crash accidents and what’s now become the largest recall in its history: more than 8 million vehicles.

The month after the Toyota executive boasted about saving money on the limited recall, a family of four riding in a Lexus in California was killed when its gas pedal stuck to a floor mat. It wasn’t until November of 2009 that Toyota issued a full recall to fix the gas pedals of its defective products.

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