Houston Police are investigating a fatal traffic collision Wednesday afternoon in which the driver who died apparently was both speeding and using his cell phone at the time.

Police said a man driving a Ford Taurus on US 290 inbound at Mangum apparently lost control of his vehicle, overcorrected and veered across several traffic lanes, hitting at least two other vehicles in the process.

A pickup truck that his vehicle struck then hit two other vehicles in a chain reaction. The pickup truck’s driver was taken to a hospital in undetermined condition.

Police said the Taurus driver seemed to have been speeding as well as using a cell phone when the collision occurred. They said alcohol did not seem to have been a factor.

Studies show that using a cell phone behind the wheel is as bad as driving while intoxicated. Approximately 5,000 Americans die each year in traffic collisions involving distracted drivers whose attention to the road was diverted by calls or texts while on cell phones.

Texas has no state law banning cell phone use or texting by drivers, unless they are school bus drivers or novice drivers. A state law bans cell phone use while driving in school zones, though school districts are required to post signs to that effect or the law does not apply. Some school districts cannot afford to do that.

However, some Texas municipalities have passed laws making texting by all drivers at all times in all places illegal, including San Antonio and Austin.

Nine states ban all cell phone use by all drivers, and 35 states ban text messaging by all drivers.

Jim S. Adler & Associates urges motorists to hang up and drive. A call or a text cannot be worth a life.

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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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A current TV ad for Chevy Cruze shows a young man and woman kissing on a sidewalk at the end of a date. He enters his car and pulls away.

Not having anything better to do but drive a vehicle through traffic, he looks at his rear-view mirror to punch a button, then is asked by an automated voice, “Good evening, what would you like to do?”

“Facebook news feed,” he answers, vaguely observing the road ahead.

The voice replies, “First post. Jennifer French. Best first date ever.”

A voice-over then plugs the car’s real-time Facebook status feature, capped by the slogan “When the good news just can’t wait.”

Oh — it can’t? Is that the message we should send America about indulging in the distracted driving that kills over 5,000 persons yearly and injures — often seriously — half a million? Or can Internet access wait until arriving safely at a destination? (more…)

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Americans say they just don’t feel safe on the road these days. And it’s distracted driving that frightens them. But, many do it anyway.

That’s the word from a recent national traffic safety study. It was commissioned by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. In one respect, the results aren’t surprising. There is a basis for the fear. Accidents are still one of the leading causes of death in the United States for “children, teens and young adults up to the age of 34.”

So why are drivers doing the very things that scare them when others do them?

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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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“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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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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