‘She took her eyes off of the road to see a text’

To the Tatum (Texas) High School student body:

“Leah Propes has phoned me this morning and asked that I share with you what she has now confirmed.

“Lillian (16) was driving home from work and was texting while driving. There was no other car involved, Lillian was not under the influence of anything in her system but the crash happened simply because she took her eyes off of the road to see a text and answer a text. Lillian was texting someone she had just recently met.

“The Propes family asked that each of you, the Tatum High School family of students, faculty and staff take this tragedy of their precious daughter’s death as a screaming message from those who love you “Don’t text while you drive”; don’t text others when you know they are driving.

“We will remember Lillian as a member of the National Honor Society, a student athletic trainer, a yearbook staffer and a member of the One Act Play cast. She is a member of the Class of 2012 and was the only child of Tim and Leah Propes.

“Lillian has been a Tatum Eagle since kindergarten.

“Her body will be cremated and the family is having a private service.

“A memorial service will be held at Tatum High School Thursday, March 31, at 7:00 p.m.”

– Principal Debbie Maxey

Sprint: Drive First with smartphone app

Sprint has dialed up an Android app whose mission is to halt distracted driving behaviors before they begin.

“Drive First” will be installed on all future Sprint Andriod phones, but subscribers must pay an additional $2 a month to engage the app. Owners of Android phones don’t need to upgrade as they’ll be able to download the app once the service launches, sometime in the third quarter, Sprint says.

The app engages GPS to determine when a cell phone is in a moving vehicle. Incoming calls are sent to voice mail while texts trigger auto-response messages. It also blocks all but three of the smartphone’s apps, in theory allowing just for essentials such as navigation.

The distracted driving technology allows parents or employers to control settings for each Sprint phone via a Web page. Although the technology allows for a user override (for emergencies or when traveling without driving), the Drive First portal logs the action.

Other upper-tier distracted driving solutions have similar functionality — such as Taser’s new Protector system and the TeenSafer subscription service — but Drive First comes with a wireless carrier’s branding, support and billing.

The Drive First app comes from the Location Labs, the same shop behind T-Mobile’s DriveSmart Plus, introduced several months back. T-Mobile had bragging rights to “the “industry’s first carrier-grade service” until now.

DriveSmart Plus is a full-featured subscription service that can be applied to all lines on a customer’s account. It’s priced at $4.99 a month and works with the LG Optimus T Android Phone.

Sprint limits Drive First customers to one smartphone per subscription, making $2 a month a better deal if two or fewer smartphones are controlled.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile said this week that the AT&T purchase of the company is not expected to affect existing services such as DriveSmart Plus for at least a year.

‘Zits’ all thumbs with texting comic

The newspaper comic strip “Zits” is dedicating the week to the dangers of distracted driving.

You can view the strips on the “Zits” web site if you hurry.

The comic, written by Jerry Scott and illustrated by Jim Borgman, follows teenager Jeremy Duncan and his pals as they navigate the path to adulthood. Jeremy, typically, is struggling with the concept that you can’t text and drive at the same time. But so is someone else …

“Zits” appears in more than 1,500 newspapers.

‘If Lives Are in Your Hands … ‘

What if your surgeon decided to do a little text messaging while you’re there on the operating table? That’s the (rhetorical) question posed by short-filmmaker David McDonald, recently honored for the safety PSA video below.

McDonald, 24, won $7,800 (CAN) worth of filmmaking tools in the distracted driving category of a short-film contest sponsored by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.

“I looked at texting and driving and what that really is — it is a dangerous thing operating a heavy vehicle that could kill,” McDonald told the Westminster News Leader on March 16.

Teen license act to ban talking & texting

Federal lawmakers have renewed their campaign for a nationwide standard for graduated driver licensing that would outlaw use of cell phones and text messaging for the young motorists.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., reintroduced the Safe Teen And Novice Driver Uniform Protection Act (STANDUP Act) this week.

Parents who lost teens in traffic accidents joined with safety and insurance groups Tuesday on Capitol Hill to show their support for the act, previously introduced in 2009 and 2010. It failed to become law in the previous Congress.

A day earlier, the Department of Transportation and Consumer Reports announced their partnership to cut down on teen distracted driving deaths.

STANDUP Act sponsor Gillibrand (pictured) told the press conference: “Our teens just need to have the opportunity to have the chance to learn in the right circumstances, so they can build their skills, so they aren’t taking risks too early, without those skills to protect them. …

“The nation should follow New York’s lead and establish strong minimum requirements for graduated driver’s licenses in all 50 states.”

The House’s Bishop said: “There isn’t a state in the nation, including New York, that has dodged the terrible suffering associated with preventable teen deaths in car crashes year in and year out. The STANDUP Act will make roadways safer for future teens, their families, and friends.”

Other sponsors of the act include Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland.

Other graduated driver licensing rules proposed by the act include a limit on the number of passengers allowed, a minimum licensing age of 16 and a prohibition of unsupervised nighttime driving.

Many states use graduated driver licensing but write their own standards, resulting in a patchwork of laws. Six states, for example, allow teens to apply for licenses at age 14. Under the act, a full driver’s license would not be issued to any driver under the age of 18. Drivers must first show success with a learner’s permit and an intermediate license, with decreasing restrictions.

Some states already ban the use of cell phones and texting devices by young drivers, and more are considering the action via legislation introduced this year. Opponents have said the bans single out teens while studies show adult drivers exhibit many of the same dangerous behaviors.

The federal government can’t actually force states to adopt any set of driving rules. Instead, the carrot-and-stick approach rewards states that meet the minimum standards for graduated driver licensing with extra funding and withholds highway funds from states that don’t.

Advocates say that more than 40,000 teens have died in crashes over the past five years.

The DOT’s Roy LaHood and Consumer Reports unveiled a brochure warning of the dangers of distracted driving by teenagers. It was designed as an action plan for parents and educators (PDF).

A survey taken last fall by Consumer Reports reports that the majority of drivers under the age of 30 had used a handheld cell phone in the previous month. Only about a third showed concern for the risks of distracted driving.

LaHood said at the Consumer Reports event that he was not ready to commit to federal restrictions on in-vehicle interactive services such as Ford’s Synch and GM’s OnStar.

“We base our solutions on data, and before I or anyone else gets up and starts talking about ‘hands-free this’ or ‘hands-free that,’ or Sync or whatever, we want to have good data to back it up,” LaHood said.

Sen. Allan Kittleman, class clown

When Maryland legislators approved a texting and driving bill last year, they screwed up. The law banned writing and sending of text messages while driving, but not the reading of texts.

Drivers also were free to text away at red lights, with their motors running and transmissions in drive.

The well-intentioned legislators behind the Maryland texting law struggled with proper wording of a texting and driving bill, as have many other lawmakers nationwide. You’d think legislation designed to close these loopholes would sail through the General Assembly, but not this year.

Meet state Sen. Allan Kittleman, former minority whip and current class clown of the Maryland Senate.

As SB 424 neared a preliminary approval in the Senate, Kittleman decided to tack on an amendment that would have made it illegal to read a newspaper while driving. It was immediately rejected. Then he tried an amendment that have criminalized eating and drinking while driving. Another quick rejection.

“You can’t tell me it is more safe to hold some French fries and a Big Mac and Coke than it is to look down and read some text messages,” Kittleman said.

SB 424′s sponsor, Sen. James Brochin, responded, dryly: “Eating is not a cerebral event,” he said. “You just do it.”

Kittleman later explained that he’d filed the amendments in order to make a point about the folly of legislating distracted driving behaviors since they were too numerous.

He wasn’t really serious, he said.

Perhaps Kittleman would like to try out his comedy routine before the families of more than 380 people killed by distracted driving in Maine over the past five years.

Tough crowd, we hear.