| Mar 23 |
Houston school kids fight distracted driving — and are noted by U.S. Transportation SecretaryLongfellow Elementary School students Kaitlynn Sanders, Nautica Winkfield (seated) and Helena Marlowe. How important is it to stop the deaths and devastation caused by distracted driving? Not enough to compel many state governments — including Texas’ — to do the right thing. And not enough for cell phone companies to set their greed aside and quit fighting safety measures. But distracted driving dangers have been important enough to spur action by a group of Houston school kids, who seem more wise than many adults. They’re students at Longfellow Elementary School, and what they’ve done is so noteworthy that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has written about it in his personal blog, which has a photo of the students. In today’s Fast Lane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, LaHood commends the Houston kids for taking “public education into their own hands.” “Budget problems prevented the City of Houston from posting signs near Longfellow alerting drivers to the dangers of texting and cell phone use while driving in a school zone,” LaHood wrote. “So safety-minded students, parents and area residents joined together to create and post their own signs.” LaHood’s blog also links to “Neighbors Taking Charge,” an item by the Bellaire Examiner noting efforts by the Longfellow PTA and neighboring Woodside Civic Club to make a bad situation better. |
| 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 | Oct 27 |
Distracted driving kills on the ground–and frightens in the air
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. |
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.| Jul 10 |
Texting Texas students are fatally distracted drivers to come
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. |
Talk about failing to see the forest for the trees. A news report by Houston’s | May 05 |
Nail-painting distracted driver causes fatal motorcycle accident
Apparently a woman in Illinois didn’t think driving required such focus. In fact, she thought driving was incidental to her primary task: painting her nails. And as a result, another woman is dead — an innocent woman who was stopped at a traffic light on her motorcycle and was wearing a helmet but nonetheless perished when a car driven by the nail-painter hit her from behind.
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How many wake-up calls does it take to drive home the point that driving is serious business — always? Driving requires your full attention, and that means keeping your hands on the wheel, your eyes on the road and your mind on operating a heavy vehicle at sometimes high speeds in complex traffic.| Feb 04 |
Inattentive driver kills school boy in car accident tragedy
In this case the boy, Cameron Dumore, was walking to school in Lithonia, GA. He was crossing the street within a crosswalk. A crossing guard was present, waving a handheld stop sign and alerting vehicles to stop. And they were, of course, in a school zone. No matter. Despite all these things, an SUV driven by a 40-year-old woman disregarded the cross walk, the school zone, the crossing guard, the handheld stop sign and every other indicator to stop — including the boy himself — and, without slowing down, struck the boy and killed him. |
Again, an innocent human being — this time a 7-year-old boy — has died — lost a lifetime — due to momentary driver distractions or inattentiveness.