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.

In some ways it’s ironic yet fitting that a star of Glee would lead such efforts to curb distracted driving, which kills 6,000 and injures half a million Americans each year. On Glee, unlike in the real world, while high school students use cell phones, they do so sparingly. Rather, they’re more engaged with their immediate environment involving performing, competing and romancing, with scant texting or calling to add degrees of separation.

In today’s world, such behavior is more of an exception than a rule. A recent study by MTV showed that teens are fixated on their mobile devices and, when denied them, suffer “unplugged meltdown.” That’s why many teens admit to texting while driving, even though they’ve been told how dangerous it is.

The five webisodes featuring Lynch will be presented in the style of community service classes, in which she plays a rehabilitated “text offender” now urging others not to do what she did: text while driving. Notably, Lynch will offer advice to parents on how to teach their children that distracted driving can be dangerous, if not fatal.

Jim S. Adler & Associates strongly supports efforts to reduce driving distractions and save lives. A personal injury attorney or personal injury lawyer with the firm also can help those harmed by distracted drivers.

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Beverly Hills, CA plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan loved to send and receive messages via texts. But apparently he didn’t get one message until too late: Texting while driving kills.

Body reshaper of reality TV’s Heidi Montag, rock music’s Gene Simmons and Vince Neil and modeling’s Janice Dickinson, Ryan, 50, died Monday. It seems the Jeep he was driving veered off the Pacific Coast Highway and crashed upside-down at the bottom of a 200-foot embankment.

Police say he was texting at the time of the crash. He’d just taken a photo of his dog at a stop and sent it via Twitter. But instead of putting his communications device away, he kept using it while driving — and paid the ultimate price.

Such catastrophic accidents have become common in this age of putting unnecessary texts and phone calls above the life-or-death necessities of driving a vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 6,000 Americans per year die in traffic accidents due to texting or cell phone distractions, and another half a million Americans are injured, many of them seriously.

That’s why 30 states and counting (but not yet Texas) have adopted laws banning texting while driving. California has such a law, but Dr. Ryan, like many people, either didn’t get the message or chose to disregard the texting law.

An irony is that Ryan was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash. Thus, he was obeying a law which, when first written, was decried by many as unenforceable. How can you make people wear seatbelts, and how can police know that they’re not?

But over the years the message has gotten through to millions of Americans that wearing seatbelts saves lives — and not wearing them contributes to tragedies. Now these same Americans need to get another message: Texting while driving leads to deaths and catastrophic injuries. Just look at the sad case of Dr. Frank Ryan.

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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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Death. Taxes. Curbs on drivers texting.

Add the last to life’s inevitabilities, because the times they are a-changing. Thirty states now ban texting while driving, and more technology is arising to take that foolish distracted driving habit out of drivers’ hands.

The latest, reported by USA Today, is software designed to stop texting, emailing or web-browsing via wireless devices while a car is in motion. It’s being developed by an Irving, TX company called . and a Georgia company called Manage Mobility.

Their technology is being offered to government agencies and corporations, which are trying to  squelch the texting tide that’s causing thousands of traffic accident fatalities and injuries and billions of dollars in losses.

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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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Kentucky and Nebraska recently became the 22nd and 23rd states to ban texting while driving, and such laws are pending in most other states. But they don’t include Texas. So soon Texas will be in a minority, with no driving safety law making it illegal to send and read text messages at the wheel of a vehicle.

Such laws are vital because too many Americans aren’t using common sense while operating a motor vehicle. Their distracted driving car crash accidents are slaughtering Americans, with 6,000 traffic fatalities yearly and more than half a million injuries, many of them serious.

Were those texts or calls worth such a price?

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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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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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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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