Like a car on freshly-inflated tires, the national momentum to outlaw texting while driving keeps on rolling. Today the U.S. Department of Transportation placed an immediate ban on interstate commercial bus and diesel truck drivers fidgeting with texting gadgets when they should be paying full attention to the road.

After all, they’re getting paid to drive, aren’t they? And, oh yes: If they stop texting, they just might save lives.

In fact, they definitely will, since distracted drivers who text or talk by cell phones kill thousands of Americans each year. So far 20 states have put the brakes on such absurd behavior, with many more states mulling a texting-while-driving ban. And now the DOT has made it illegal — coast to coast — for diesel truck and bus drivers, too.

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Jim S. Adler & Associates has campaigned for years against the cell phone accident dangers of talking or texting while driving. Now many state governments are seeing the light. Nineteen states already ban texting while driving, while 23 more are assessing such legislation. In fact, 34 states are considering proposed bills either to ban or widen bans on the causes of distracted driving.

Why? Because distracted driving kills. It’s that simple. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that 515,000 persons were injured and 5,870 persons died in traffic accidents in 2008 due to distracted drivers. That’s 16 per cent of all U.S. traffic deaths — enough to help spark creation of FocusDriven, a national non-profit group dedicated to fighting distracted driving.

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Toyota and Lexus cars have a defect, and as a result, Americans are dying. It’s a stuck accelerator pedal, which gets snagged on a floor mat. Braking alone will not stop a car that’s in full and constant acceleration, which is why scores of Americans have been injured or killed.

Last October, four people died near San Diego due to a stuck Toyota accelerator pedal. They were a California Highway Patrol officer and his family of three. Almost four million such vehicles are on America’s roads.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated and initially dismissed many incidents, though hundreds were reported. Yet the accidents, injuries and fatalities mounted. Finally, the NHTSA and Toyota — which also owns Lexus — asked drivers of the defective Toyota and Lexus vehicles to remove their driver’s side floor mat and not replace it. This safety measure pertains to models from 2004-2010.

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American babies are being harmed by strollers which are supposed to protect them. Instead, certain model numbers of Alano, Passage, Travel Systems and Spree Strollers are causing fingertip amputations or cut fingers in infants who put their digits in canopy hinges as strollers open or close.

Graco Children’s Products Inc. of Atlanta, which produces the strollers sold at Target, Wal-Mart and other retailers, this week issued a recall of 1.5 million strollers, all made in China. Other retailers selling them between October 2004 and last December are Kmart, Sears, Fred Meyer, Burlington Coat Factory, AAFES, Navy Exchange, Meijer, Babies R Us and Toys R Us.

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In increasingly urban Texas, bicyclists and pedestrians are increasingly endangered. Yet Gov. Rick Perry last year vetoed a bill — passed overwhelmingly by the Senate and House — which would have offered  more protection to cyclists and walkers on or near our roads.

Now some cities, such as Austin, are enacting the same law on a municipal basis. And San Antonio may get one, too. A city council committee voted unanimously this week to send a “safe passing” ordinance for “vulnerable road uses” to the full council for approval next month.

Why is this vital? Because Texans are dying, and every bit helps. In 2008 alone, 50 Texans on bicycles were killed and 274 suffered incapacitating injuries in car-bicycle accidents. And every year, about 400 Texas pedestrians are killed by vehicles in car-pedestrian accidents.

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The idea seemed good at first: Cities would install “red light cameras” at high-risk intersections, in hopes of slowing down traffic as a deterrent. Such cameras could capture irrefutable evidence that a car ran a red light, while displaying its license number. The drivers then could be ticketed by mail.

The only trouble was, traffic still didn’t tend to slow down until lights turned “yellow,” at which point some drivers began hitting their brakes instead of pressing through, for fear of getting a ticket via a red light camera, while other drivers — speeding and tailgating — hit them from behind.

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With 19 states and the District of Columbia now making it illegal to text while driving, you wonder when Texas will wise up. So far, only municipalities have passed such laws, the biggest being Austin. And the only state law on the books protects only school children by making it illegal to text or use a cell phone while driving through a school zone.

But does this law truly protect kids? Not exactly. That’s because individual school districts still must pay for signs to be posted in school zones to warn drivers that such behavior is illegal. And if they don’t, the law doesn’t apply.

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Americans love their holiday traditions, including New Year’s Eve. In Japan, the new year isn’t widely acknowledged until people rise the next morning. But in the USA, millions of revelers party past midnight to ring in another year. The only trouble is, such partying often includes heavy drinking and unleashes drunk drivers on our roads.

It’s always the same story, so you’d think Americans would wake up and learn a vital lesson: Don’t drink and drive. Yet such deaths spike during year-end holidays, and thousands of Americans (nearly 14,000 in 2008) become yearly statistics in drunk driving fatalities.

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As a vintage bus line slogan goes, “Leave the driving to us.” Trouble is, when you do that you also leave safety precautions to bus lines, and safety doesn’t always lead their to-do list.

Take the Jan. 2, 2008 Texas bus accident in which one Houston passenger was killed and 17 were injured seriously, with two of them losing arms in the crash. The driver fell asleep at the wheel, ran off U.S. 59, over-corrected and flipped the bus on its side, where it was hit by a pickup truck. Again, a complex and catastrophic traffic accident happened very quickly.

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Though Texas has failed to join the 19 states so far which ban texting while driving — a no-brainer law if ever there was one — at least some Texas cities are passing such laws, and the latest and largest is our capital city of Austin.

On Thursday Austin City Council unanimously passed a ban on texting while driving. It won’t go into effect until Jan. 2, but in the meantime, the city will wage a campaign to educate the public about it.

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