The Department of Transportation will spend another $2.4 million to combat cell phone use while driving, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today. The department also issued a detailed plan pressing for states to pass laws and the auto industry to adopt technology to reduce distracted driving nationwide. The “Blueprint for Ending Distracting Driving” and the department’s “Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other” enforcement program are the latest actions aimed at what LaHood called an “epidemic” of distracted driving, which is responsible for 3,000 deaths annually—with teens and young drivers being at particularly high risk. The $2.4 million layout will expand the pilot program “Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other” to California and Delaware in the fall. The program will examine whether “increased police enforcement coupled with paid media and news media coverage can significantly reduce distracted continue
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called on Thursday for a federal law to ban talking on a cell phone or texting while driving any type of vehicle on any road in the country. Tough federal legislation is the only way to deal with what he called a “national epidemic,” he said at a distracted-driving summit in San Antonio, Texas, that drew doctors, advocates and government officials. LaHood said it is important for the police to have “the opportunity to write tickets when people are foolishly thinking they can drive safely or use a cell phone and text and drive.” LaHood has previously criticized behind-the-wheel use of cell phones and other devices, but calling for a federal law prohibiting the practice takes his effort to a new level. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 3,000 fatal traffic accidents nationwide last year were the result of distracted driving. Using a cell phone while driving continue
The No. 1 killer of combat troops returning to the U.S. is not suicide. It’s car accidents, according to the Veterans Affairs Department. Oldiers and Marines (and, to a lesser extent, sailors and airmen) learn to “drive to survive” in foreign battlegrounds. But those same driving skills don’t translate well to U.S. roads and are proving deadly for troops, MyFoxHouston.com reports. It was complete culture shock coming from the military back to Houston,” explained Bryan Escobedo, a former sergeant with the U.S. Marine Corps. “For a long time, when I was driving on the highway, I always thought that there was IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]. Anything that I saw on the side of the road, I’d swerve all the way. I don’t know, it would just overtake me with anxiety and I sometimes had to pull over and gather myself,” continue
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