Shamelessly picking profits over safety, Google and Intel Corporation are pushing computer screens for car dashboards. That’s right: Drivers near you soon will careen into you thanks to such infotainment “progress.”

The computer and Internet industry’s brazen irresponsibility is especially galling given the thousands of Americans who already are killed and maimed by distracted drivers fixated on phones and texts. Add flashy computer screens to the mix and you’ll get far more traffic tragedies.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

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.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

How often do you avoid car wrecks almost caused by drivers on cell phones? Or perhaps you’ve been injured already by such distracted drivers. In either case, the phone industry doesn’t care. Wireless service providers made $148 billion last year, and the thousands of Americans killed and hurt by distracted drivers using their product are treated as collateral damage.

Indeed, a recent study by the New York Times shows that cell providers have known for decades about the obvious risks of distracted drivers, but were reluctant to do anything about it other than giving token warnings about their product — while paying heavily in ads to pitch them to drivers.

In experimental stages as early as the 1940s, through costly status-symbol models of the 1980s, through the cell phone explosion of the 1990s, cell phones were pointedly marketed as portable, use-them-anywhere “car phones” — and that hasn’t changed. The cell industry has been determined to reap huge profits by turning drivers into callers, even if that meant many people would die or be injured in cell phone car accidents.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

For those who say “I know how to drive and I’m just going to the store” when texting or making cell calls behind the wheel, how would you feel about an airline pilot doing the same? In effect that’s what happened last week when an Airbus overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles.

Delta Airlines says its pilots failed in their duty because they were distracted by using personal laptops in the cockpit — which is against the rules. Engrossed in their electronic devices, they disregarded calls from air traffic control, leading to 78 minutes of radio silence and an unauthorized trip to nowhere via auto pilot.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

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.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

An item in today’s San Antonio Express-News shows how far Texas has to go to treat pedestrians and cyclists with respect on our roads. It pertains to a horrible accident last week in which a San Antonio-area couple riding a tandem bicycle on a road’s shoulder were hit and killed by a pickup truck traveling 70 mph in a 65 mph zone.

The driver “lost control” — a common excuse for bad driving — and veered onto the shoulder, killing the two people.

No charges have been filed in the tragedy. Nor have charges been filed in the case of David Mollenauer, a San Antonio Symphony musician who was hit by a car while on his bike and left for dead earlier this year.

Mollenauer survived, and witnesses even got the car’s license number. Yet again, no charges have been filed, even though the driver’s identity is known.

Some say that’s because Texas treats cyclists and pedestrians as second-class citizens. If a car strikes property and damages it, then its driver is legally liable for negligence. If a car strikes a person in a motorcycle accident, bicycle accident or pedestrian accident, the car’s driver may face no penalty at all — even in a hit and run!

(more…)

Share on Facebook

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.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

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…)

Share on Facebook

The “hang up and drive” movement is gaining momentum. With distracted drivers killing and injuring thousands, the feds are holding a summit on the issue this month, and Illinois has joined the ranks of states which ban texting while driving.

Now a new study shows that every other state could fall in line — provided its legislators listen to the voters who elected them, and not cell phone lobbyists.

In a national survey held last month by Nationwide Insurance, 80 per cent of adult Americans favored a legal ban on texting while driving. Even more encouraging is that two-thirds of respondents favor laws restricting cell phone calls while driving, with 57 per cent even including hands-free phones in such proposals.

A Nationwide official called this a “groundswell of momentum on banning texting” while driving. So far, 17 states and the District of Columbia have such laws.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

In today’s world of searing rhetoric and bombastic bumper stickers, you might hear or see two conflicting slogans: “Hang up and drive” and “You’ll take my cell phone when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.” Yet when the dust has cleared from a horrendous car accident, both messages just might serve the same end.

That end is safe driving without using a cell phone or PDA to text, dial, redial, read texts, send texts, talk endlessly or otherwise take your mind and eyes away from the road while you act like a doctor who’s on call 24/7. Would you try passing a driver’s license test while diverted this way? No, and for good reason. You could kill yourself or someone else. Haven’t done so yet? As they say, always a first time.

Starting Sept. 1, a new Texas law drives that message home, making it illegal to use a cell phone — except for a hands-free device — while driving in school zones where such signs are posted. Those signs, sadly, are the rub — more on that later.

(more…)

Share on Facebook