| Mar 12 |
Car accident deaths down, despite rise in distracted driving fatalities
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. |
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.
| Jan 25 |
As car crash accidents rise, more states ban distracted driving via texting, talking by cell phone
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. |
Jim S. Adler & Associates has campaigned for years against the | 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.”| Jan 06 |
Talking, texting, distracted driving in Texas school zones is illegal — sometimes
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. |
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 | 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.| Oct 02 |
CellControl could curb distracted driving, cell phone accidents
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. |
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.