What’s the safest car on the road? These days it’s a new SUV. In a surprising switch, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety calls new SUVs the safest cars around. The IIHS says SUV drivers are “the least likely to be killed in a crash.” The turnaround is amazing given the SUV’s reputation for fatal accidents even at low speeds because of its weight and top-heavy construction.

The IIHS turnaround comes with new anti-rollover technology called electronic stability control or ESC. It prevents the skids that lead to rollover accidents. Rollover accidents were often fatal as the SUV’s roof crushed down on passengers when it rolled, causing brain and spinal injuries.

But some SUV drivers still aren’t safe. They are driving SUVs made before 2005 without  electronic stability control. That puts millions of drivers at risk. Read the rest of this entry

A proposed law that would have banned texting while driving for all Texas drivers statewide died on Governor Rick Perry’s desk June 17 when he hit it with the veto pen.  Supporters say the law was needed. Opponents say it would take away too much freedom.They also say distracted driving accidents increase after distracted driving bills become law.

So what are the facts? How much does texting while driving contribute to injuries and fatalities on the road?

The U. S. Department of Transportation started a campaign against distracted driving last year aimed primarily at drivers who text and talk on cell phones behind the wheel. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood calls the behavior a “deadly epidemic.”

But the Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, disagrees, saying laws that prohibit texting while driving “are not bringing down crash rates.” The Institute says its study shows an increase in distracted driving accidents when the new anti-texting laws go into effect. The HLDI drew its conclusions from accident statistics in four states with new distracted driving laws.

LaHood says the study is” misleading.” He compares it to national DOT statistics that paint a very different picture. According to the DOT, 5,500 people in the United States were killed and half a million were injured in distracted driving accidents in 2009, the last year that national figures were available. A cell phone was involved in 18 percent of those fatalities.

The trucking industry is bragging these days about a big drop in fatal and non-fatal accidents involving big rigs. It’s especially proud that happened while the number of trucks on the road was increasing.

The American Trucking Association says there was a 41 percent increase in “registered large trucks and an 84 percent increase in miles traveled by large trucks” between 1986 and 2006. Meanwhile, there was a drop of 35,948 fatal and non-fatal accidents involving big rigs between 2006 and 2009, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Administration.

Does that matter if a car is in a bad accident with a truck? No!  That’s because a major fact hasn’t changed. When there’s an accident between a car and a truck, the passengers in the car are usually the ones who die. Read the rest of this entry

Getting a driver’s license is a rite of passage for teens. Put simply, they can’t wait. But for too many, the license they covet so much is a one-way ticket in the back of a hearse to a graveyard.

Car accidents are the number one cause of death every year among American teens. And summer is the deadliest season of all. Nationwide, 422 teens die in car accidents every month during the summer. In 2009, 366 fatal collisions took the lives of Texas teens.

Put a teen in a car during the summer, at night, with a cell phone and perhaps a few drinks under his or her belt and it’s a recipe for disaster.

But it could get worse. Read the rest of this entry

Accutane has millions of victims — people who believed the acne drug would forever cure the nasty pustules scarring their faces. And it did. But thousands ended up with life-changing diseases of the intestines. When Accutane came on the market in 1982, it was hailed as the long-awaited miracle cure for the scourge of acne. Millions clamored for prescriptions from doctors, even those with mild cases of acne. Unknowingly, many were opening the door to a lifetime of pain and disability caused by Crohn’s Disease, ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease.

During much of Accutane’s 27 years on the market, its maker knew of its potential to cause these devastating diseases of the gut, but kept it a secret. Accutane’s manufacturer made billions at the expense of its victims. One victim, who had to have his colon replaced after taking Accutane, won a $25 million settlement. Other victims have filed suit as well.

Underride guards that are supposed to prevent cars from sliding under large trucks are failing at relatively low speeds, according to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The organization is urging the federal government to order stronger guards on the backs of 18 wheelers to protect passengers in cars that rear-end big rigs.

While passenger cars are better designed these days to withstand collisions with other cars, they are not built to hold up when the top of the car hits the back of a truck and slides under it. Typically, the upper part of the car is crushed or sliced off in such a collision. These accidents are frequently fatal for the car’s passengers even at low rates of speed.

According to the IIHS, the fronts of cars can absorb a tremendous amount of “crash energy” these days due to better designs. But that’s only true when a car hits another car. The IIHS says hitting the back of a truck is a “game changer” for a car. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that about 423 people die every year in passenger vehicles that hit trucks with underride guards that break, allowing the car to slide under them.

The IIHS wants tougher standards for underride guards but doesn’t see much hope for a change without a federal mandate. Otherwise, manufacturers will have little incentive to strengthen the guards.

A new AAA study about drunk driving shows that last year nearly 11,000 people were killed by drunk drivers in the United States — nearly one-third of all road deaths in America. Some of the drunks had very high blood alcohol concentrations (.15+). Others were were over the legal limit of .08 and had a prior drunk driving conviction.

According to the AAA study, nine out of 10 Americans want the courts to order anyone convicted of drunk driving more than once to install an alcohol ignition interlock on their car — a device that won’t let it start if they have been drinking. Sixty-nine percent want the courts to order those convicted of drunk driving once to have the same requirement.

If drunk driving is such a deadly crime and so many Americans want “blow devices” installed on the cars of these drivers, why doesn’t the drunk driving death rate drop?

But here’s the shocker in the study: It showed that one in 10 drivers surveyed for its third Annual Traffic Safety Culture Index admitted to driving when they suspected they might have been close to or over the legal limit. One in five of those surveyed said they had done so more than once in the the last year. The AAA survey interviewed 2,000 American drivers nationwide 16 or older by telephone between May 11, 2010 and June 7, 2010.