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Texas Gov. Rick Perry has vetoed a new bill the Texas Legislature passed to add Texas to the ranks of 32 other states making it illegal to read or send text messages while driving. Perry says government shouldn’t “micromanage” adults’ behavior, and instead education should be emphasized to steer people from the dangerous habit.

It’s been said by scientists that distracted driving is as bad as drunk driving, and statistics would seem to bear this out. As driving distractions continue to mushroom, so do traffic deaths and injuries due to distracted drivers, who could kill up to 6,000 persons on America’s roads and highways this year. The rate of distracted driving deaths, in fact, has doubled in recent years.

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Longfellow Elementary School students Kaitlynn Sanders, Nautica Winkfield (seated) and Helena Marlowe.

How important is it to stop the deaths and devastation caused by distracted driving? Not enough to compel many state governments — including Texas’ — to do the right thing. And not enough for cell phone companies to set their greed aside and quit fighting safety measures.

But distracted driving dangers have been important enough to spur action by a group of Houston school kids, who seem more wise than many adults. They’re students at Longfellow Elementary School, and what they’ve done is so noteworthy that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has written about it in his personal blog, which has a photo of the students.

In today’s Fast Lane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, LaHood commends the Houston kids for taking “public education into their own hands.”

“Budget problems prevented the City of Houston from posting signs near Longfellow alerting drivers to the dangers of texting and cell phone use while driving in a school zone,” LaHood wrote. “So safety-minded students, parents and area residents joined together to create and post their own signs.”

LaHood’s blog also links to “Neighbors Taking Charge,” an item by the Bellaire Examiner noting efforts by the Longfellow PTA and neighboring Woodside Civic Club to make a bad situation better.

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What is going on at Toyota?

In 2008, the Japanese auto maker became the world’s largest auto manufacturer, knocking General Motors out of the top slot after 77 years. Toyota’s sales last year amounted to 8.418 million vehicles worldwide. Clearly,car buyers trusted the brand. Now Toyota appears to be headed for a record as the auto manufacturer with the most recalls in history.

This week, it recalled nearly 1.7 million cars worldwide. Add up its recalls since 2009 and they total nearly 16 million cars. What happened? (more…)

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USA Today has some traffic accident news for us: Rural roads are more dangerous than urban roads.

Are Jim S. Adler & Associates’ car crash lawyers on top of this? More than USA Today, it seems.

Jimadler.com ran a car wreck blog post on the same conclusion more than 15 months ago. That’s when we alerted you that rural driving is riskier than more crowded urban driving. And why? (more…)

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A battle is brewing between auto makers and big insurance companies with some hard-hitting consequences for drivers. At stake are more wrecks and increased costs for auto insurance even for safe drivers.

It boils down to this: Automakers want to build touch screen TV monitors with Internet access into new cars to recoup their losses during the economic downturn. Big insurance companies know that will boost the number of distracted driving accidents, increasing insurance company costs that will have to be passed on to all drivers.

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Commercials make renting a car seem so easy. The airways are full of car rental deals. A quick call puts drivers in any car they want, commercials say. The company will even deliver it. The service is fast, efficient and dangerous.

How could it be dangerous? The answer is simple and it points out a major flaw in government transportation standards. Car rental companies don’t have to repair recalled cars before renting or selling them. Consumer groups are urging the government to change that because the practice leads to car accidents.

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“WHERE U AT.”

That’s a text message — a fatal text message sent by Mariah West, 18, of Missouri, just before she veered off a road, smashed into a bridge and died.

Her story and other sad ones like it are told in The Last Text, a sobering, disturbing and tragic 10-minute documentary produced by AT&T and hosted on its website.

The documentary has interviews with a teen driver who killed a bicyclist while he was texting at the wheel; a teen who was devastatingly injured as a passenger in a texting while driving crash; and friends and relatives of teens who perished in such accidents.

It’s perhaps fitting that the focus is on teens, since they tend to text more than others — sometimes thousands of times per month. Such obsession even has been called an addiction.

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A federal judge in California has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in Toyota lawsuits over defective cars which were flawed by such problems as sudden acceleration and faulty braking.

In U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, CA, Toyota had moved to dismiss key causes of action in 51 lawsuits pending against it. But Judge James V. Selna issued a preliminary opinion to deny this. Instead, lawsuits can proceed against Toyota for negligence, design defects, failure to warn and fraudulent concealment.

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In California, it’s against the law to hold a cell phone while driving. Hands-free devices are allowed, but sacrificing a hand from the wheel — and a large chunk of one’s attention from the road  — is forbidden.

Yet Maria Schwarzenegger was photographed yakking by phone as she drove in California last fall, despite a law her husband helped pass. And on Monday, Disney Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus was stopped by police in North Hollywood as she chatted by phone while driving to a salon for a massage.

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