In 2009, fewer Americans died in traffic accidents than in any year since 1950, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Vehicle crashes killed 33,808 Americans last year, the lowest total since records began being kept in 1950, when 33,186 perished. That’s also 10 per cent fewer traffic fatalities than in 2008.

But before we celebrate, consider the families of those 33,808 victims. Their loved ones remain a statistic — and a grim one — and they cannot celebrate. And if they can’t, why can we?

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Emmy-nominated actress Jane Lynch, who plays fiery cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester on hit Fox TV show Glee, has joined LG Text Ed, a new campaign to coach parents how to teach teens to use mobile phones responsibly and avoid distracted driving.

Lynch will appear in webisodes for the campaign on driving while distracted, and she also will be a member of its council. The effort is sponsored by LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, a division of South Korea’s LG Electronics.

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America’s teens seem to have a disconnect between what they’ve been told and what they do. They’ve been told and given fair warning that distracted driving is deadly, killing 6,000 Americans yearly and injuring hundreds of thousands. Yet 86 per cent of teen drivers indulge in distracted driving anyway, often in the form of texting or making cell phone calls while at the wheel.

This finding came via a study conducted by Seventeen magazine and AAA auto club and reported by USA Today. It reported other common forms of distracted driving among teens as eating, adjusting a music device, applying makeup and driving with four or more other teens in the vehicle.

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Texas has 17 million drivers on its roads. Sadly, several million of them who once passed a driving test wouldn’t be able to pass one today.

At least, that’s the finding of a recent GMAC Insurance study, which showed that almost 20 per cent of drivers nationwide — or about 38 million — would fail a driving test. In Texas that translates to about 3.4 million drivers who’d fail a driving test.

The survey also showed that Texas ranks 35th among the 50 states in driving test abilities. GMAC said Texans got 76 per cent of its driving test questions correctly, a bit below the national average of 76.2 per cent.

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The long Memorial Day weekend ahead is sure to bring car accident misery to Texas roads. But it’s also sure to bring more enforcement of our roadway laws. That’s because Texas Department of Public Safety officers will be out in force. While you play, they will work.

Last year, DPS officers issued more than 8,500 speeding tickets on Memorial Day weekend. They also wrote out 1,937 tickets for failing to wear seat belts and 521 for failing to provide proper child restraints. They also arrested 622 people for drunk driving.

Those kinds of violations again will be targeted for this long weekend, the DPS promises.

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If your teen sons or daughters have a texting habit, and that extends to when they’re driving, they have a significantly higher chance of drying in a car crash. That’s the report of the Texas Transportation Institute, via data provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The report reveals a study showing that nighttime fatal crashes are increasing at a faster rate for young age groups. That spike is being attributed not just to more night trips by teen drivers, but to teens texting while driving at night.

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The world is dangerous enough beyond our control, yet many of us also need protection from ourselves. That includes the millions of Americans who blithely chat on cell phones, send and receive texts and otherwise disengage from their primary — and life-protecting — task of driving a car.

With thousands dead and hundreds of thousands injured as a result of cell phone accidents, a national summit on distracted driving addressed the issue this week. Now a new gadget also responds to the car carnage. It’s called CellControl.

Introduced at the distracted driving summit in Washington, D.C., CellControl is a tiny device that can be attached to a car’s on board computer, a part of almost all vehicles built since 1996. After downloading CellControl’s software to a cell phone, the phone will cease functioning whenever the vehicle is in motion, though it will function when the vehicle is stopped.

That’s right: No texting. No emails. No calling. No receiving calls. In short, no potentially fatal driving distractions.

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With a national summit on distracted drivers set for this week, studies due today from the journal Pediatrics show that parents can have a huge effect on how effective — or distracted — their teen drivers become.

Conducted by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA and given funding by State Farm Insurance Co., the studies show that parents who set specific driving boundaries and urge caution in their kids are a lot more likely to have kids who survive into adulthood. (more…)

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Talk about failing to see the forest for the trees. A news report by Houston’s KHOU TV Channel 11 on its website today has the headline “Cell phone fines mean big bucks for some Texas school districts.” The story concerns fines students must pay when they text or otherwise use cell phones in class, which is against school rules.

As the headline and the article’s content make clear, KHOU’s author considers the problem to be this: “Some schools are cashing in.” She goes on to question how the money collected when students break the rules and text in class is administered. Though there’s no evidence given of impropriety, the author’s conspiracy-theory attitude seems to be, “Those mean ol’ sneaky school districts!”

Of course, the real problem here with far broader implications and concerns is this: Too many of today’s students are disengaged from teachers, class, learning and their immediate environment because they are addicted to cell phones, texting and other avenues of needlessly incessant and exceedingly trivial communication.

These same students, when they drive a car or do a job for which others depend on them, are far more likely to continue such addictive behavior, thereby failing at their responsibilities and, in worst cases, killing themselves or someone else by being a distracted driver.

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Texas teens, soon two of your favorite pastimes will be split. Going to the mall and enjoying a burger? No, cell phone talking or texting — and driving.

This week the Texas House tentatively approved a measure which would ban teens under age 18 from using a cell phone while driving, even if the phone is a hands-free device. Exceptions would be made only for making emergency calls while behind the wheel.

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