Drunk driving accounts for a whopping one third of all U.S. traffic fatalities, or about 12,000 Americans killed in the past year. But drunk driving isn’t the same throughout America. Some cities have worse problems than others with alcohol, as surveyed by Men’s Health magazine. It found Fresno, CA as the “most drunk city in America.”

The magazine’s survey included a city’s alcohol-related car crashes, its number of drunk driving arrests and the severity of its drunk driving penalties. It also based conclusions on death rates from alcoholic liver disease and the frequency of binge drinking.

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Will Toyota’s defective product failures ever stop? First it was SUV rollover calamities. Then it was stuck accelerator pedal catastrophes. Now it’s bad brakes on Toyota’s Prius, the world’s top-selling gas-electric hybrid vehicle.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has begun investigating flaws in the 2010 Prius’ brakes, after its safety arm, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fielded 124 complaints from consumers. Four of those complaints concerned brake-related accidents in the Japanese automaker’s hybrids.

It seems some Prius brakes fail to function properly when the vehicle travels over potholes, bumpy roads or surfaces which are slippery or uneven. That’s not good, especially when you consider how common such surfaces are on streets and highways. On them, a Prius’ braking might pause when the car shifts from its traditional hydraulic brakes to an electronic braking system.

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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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Jim S. Adler & Associates has campaigned for years against the cell phone accident dangers of talking or texting while driving. Now many state governments are seeing the light. Nineteen states already ban texting while driving, while 23 more are assessing such legislation. In fact, 34 states are considering proposed bills either to ban or widen bans on the causes of distracted driving.

Why? Because distracted driving kills. It’s that simple. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that 515,000 persons were injured and 5,870 persons died in traffic accidents in 2008 due to distracted drivers. That’s 16 per cent of all U.S. traffic deaths — enough to help spark creation of FocusDriven, a national non-profit group dedicated to fighting distracted driving.

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Toyota and Lexus cars have a defect, and as a result, Americans are dying. It’s a stuck accelerator pedal, which gets snagged on a floor mat. Braking alone will not stop a car that’s in full and constant acceleration, which is why scores of Americans have been injured or killed.

Last October, four people died near San Diego due to a stuck Toyota accelerator pedal. They were a California Highway Patrol officer and his family of three. Almost four million such vehicles are on America’s roads.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated and initially dismissed many incidents, though hundreds were reported. Yet the accidents, injuries and fatalities mounted. Finally, the NHTSA and Toyota — which also owns Lexus — asked drivers of the defective Toyota and Lexus vehicles to remove their driver’s side floor mat and not replace it. This safety measure pertains to models from 2004-2010.

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In increasingly urban Texas, bicyclists and pedestrians are increasingly endangered. Yet Gov. Rick Perry last year vetoed a bill — passed overwhelmingly by the Senate and House — which would have offered  more protection to cyclists and walkers on or near our roads.

Now some cities, such as Austin, are enacting the same law on a municipal basis. And San Antonio may get one, too. A city council committee voted unanimously this week to send a “safe passing” ordinance for “vulnerable road uses” to the full council for approval next month.

Why is this vital? Because Texans are dying, and every bit helps. In 2008 alone, 50 Texans on bicycles were killed and 274 suffered incapacitating injuries in car-bicycle accidents. And every year, about 400 Texas pedestrians are killed by vehicles in car-pedestrian accidents.

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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.

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Americans love their holiday traditions, including New Year’s Eve. In Japan, the new year isn’t widely acknowledged until people rise the next morning. But in the USA, millions of revelers party past midnight to ring in another year. The only trouble is, such partying often includes heavy drinking and unleashes drunk drivers on our roads.

It’s always the same story, so you’d think Americans would wake up and learn a vital lesson: Don’t drink and drive. Yet such deaths spike during year-end holidays, and thousands of Americans (nearly 14,000 in 2008) become yearly statistics in drunk driving fatalities.

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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.

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Sure, cities have traffic jams, while the country has roadside vendors selling jams — and little traffic. But rural drivers should know this: You are more likely to die in a car or truck accident than those on packed  urban streets or freeways.

Why? Glad you asked. For one thing, people tend to drive faster on rural roads — and certainly have more freedom to do so, compared to city folk bogged down by numbers. Urbanites who are stalled at rush hour, take heart: At least your slow speed makes it less likely you’ll get hurt in a collision.

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