| Dec 30 |
Enterprise pays $18 million to rental car victim
How could it be dangerous? The answer is simple and it points out a major flaw in government transportation standards. Car rental companies don’t have to repair recalled cars before renting or selling them. Consumer groups are urging the government to change that because the practice leads to car accidents. |
Commercials make renting a car seem so easy. The airways are full of car rental deals. A quick call puts drivers in any car they want, commercials say. The company will even deliver it. The service is fast, efficient and dangerous.
| Mar 29 |
Got a second? You could cut Houston car crash deaths
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. |
The | Feb 04 |
Toyota stuck accelerator followed by Prius bad brakes defect
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. |
Will Toyota’s defective product failures ever stop? First it was | Jan 13 |
FocusDriven to fight distracted driver car accident carnage
About 6,000 Americans died last year due to distracted drivers, many of whom were texting or calling by cell phone when they caused such tragedies. Longtime Texas personal injury law firm Jim S. Adler & Associates strongly supports measures to curb distracted driving and spare thousands of Americans and their families the wrenching loss of a distracted driver car accident. |
A woman in Grapevine, Texas, whose mother was killed by | Jan 08 |
PCs on car dashboards will bring ERs large crash hordes
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. |
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.”| Dec 07 |
Cell phone industry picks profits over car accident deaths caused by distracted drivers
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. |
How often do you avoid car wrecks almost caused by drivers on cell phones? Or perhaps you’ve been injured already by such | Dec 02 |
Car accident injuries are a seasonal bah-humbug
Sometimes that can come from an overly fierce focus. How else do you explain the fact that a woman was run down by an SUV in a southwest Houston parking lot recently? The reason? Another driver thought the parking place she’d claimed was rightly his — and took it out on her by running her down. Apparently, holiday shopping stress can do that to people. |
When holiday stress spawns rudeness, if not recklessness, the holiday season can be a tough time for innocent drivers and passengers. But in this age of talking, texting and otherwise distracted drivers, it’s gotten worse. In Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and throughout Texas, car accidents will put Christmas coal in many stockings, because drivers — who are already preoccupied — will magnify their disengagement with even more heedlessness.| May 07 |
Car accident tragedies kill more kids than any other danger
That’s confirmed by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, which says car accidents are the top cause of deaths in kids aged 2-14. The center also says car accidents injure 250,000 American kids yearly. With about 2,000 of them suffering fatal injury, children are the victims in 5 per cent of America’s fatal traffic accidents. And unlike adults, it’s safe to say that no such child has caused the car accident in which he or she died. |
Most parents are extremely protective of kids. But anytime they take them in a car or other vehicle they’re exposing them to the No. 1 killer of America’s children. Indeed, child safety advocate group Safe Kids USA reports that | Apr 21 |
GPS means SOS in car accident wave
But is that truly progress? At least, can it be progress when many such GPS devices are faulty and lead drivers virtually over a cliff, or going the wrong way down a one-way street, or into a narrowing street in which they’ll be stuck? |
We often think progress is measured by technological advancement. After all, many of our cars now have a GPS, or global positioning system, which helps us to navigate anywhere in the world. Via satellite links, a GPS can provide digital mapping info and automated voices to direct us from anywhere to just about anywhere else.| Apr 20 |
Drunk driving AND calling ensure a car accident
That’s what Houston prosecutors are confronting as they assess the case of a man who reportedly was both drunk and receiving a cell phone call when he ran off a road and into a drainage ditch recently near Bush Intercontinental Airport, causing the unimaginable horror of drowning five young children who were occupants of the vehicle. |
Studies show that persons who call and text while behind the wheel drive as poorly as if they were drunk. Now imagine a driver being drunk and using a cell phone at the same time.