Texting Claims Lives of Drivers

Story first reported from Yahoo.com

Judging by stories in just the past few weeks, texting while driving has become America's most urgent public safety issue, filling local television screens across the country with stories of crashes, near-misses and dire warnings. What's less clear is whether a brace of new laws will do much, or how many drivers will be willing to turn off their phones completely while driving.

The scene comes from Aberdeen, Wash., where a teenager at the wheel of a Dodge Ram pickup on Sunday ran off the road into a wooden fence, sending one slat through the windshield where his head should be. According to KOMO-TV, the driver only suffered minor injuries, but the Washington State Police say witnesses saw the driver texting in the moments before the crash.

Last month, a Houston man revealed that moments before a serious crash, he had texted "I need to quit texting because I could die in a car accident." And last week, Alabama became the 39th state to make it a crime to enter text into a phone while behind the wheel; in 10 states and the District of Columbia, it's illegal to pick up your phone at all while driving. A Chicago car accident lawyer says there has been an up-tick in legal ramifications as a result of traffic accidents due to texting while driving.

While such laws are still relatively new, some police agencies are already saying they're not effective enough. The problem is the great unanswered question among safety advocates: Is texting that much more or less dangerous than anything else people do with their phones while driving? Alabama's law, like most states, still allows drivers to dial numbers, look at maps and otherwise use the phone, but not text. Telling the difference between the two from outside a car moving 70 mph isn't a job most troopers or anyone else can do, as WCNC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., found when it sent two cameramen out to surreptitiously bust drivers in the act.

And the Alabama law also highlights a mismatch between the furor over texting and what's known about its actual impact. While cellphones have become ubiquitous over the past two decades, deaths in accidents and crashes have declined to record lows. Research has shown time and again that driving with a cell phone reduces concentration and can lead to crashes, but has yet to put a firm link on just how many crashes might be caused directly by electronic distractions. Alabama authorities say their record show that in 2010, drivers distracted by cellphones or other electronic devices contributed to 1,256 crashes and five deaths. It's a sad statistic, but that same year, alcohol-related accidents killed 279 people in Alabama, a figure that did not lead to any new laws.

Whatever the studies say, it's clear that not paying attention behind the wheel for any reason makes driving less safe, even with modern aids like Bluetooth and voice commands. Driving can be tedious, and the need to stay connected so strong that far too many drivers think they can get away with it -- right until the fence comes through the windshield. Once upon a time, people were forced to travel without concern for e-mails and telephone calls they could be missing. Try it on your next drive, and stay off the local news.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News  blog.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.

Smartphones In the Courtroom During Divorces

Story first appeared in Detroit Free Press.

If the smartphone in your pocket or purse seems critical to your daily life, imagine how important it could be to your spouse's divorce lawyer states a Raleigh Divorce Lawyer.

The modern cell phone brims with information divorce lawyers and judges are eager to see, such as text messages, photographs, videos, e-mail, Internet browser links, call histories, calendar entries and GPS tracking data.

Add that to the golden triumvirate through which private misbehavior now becomes permanently public -- Facebook, Twitter and YouTube postings -- and lawyers practicing family law have more electronic means than ever to settle those timeless "he said, she said" arguments with devastating certainty.

Consider the possibilities:

• Not bad-mouthing me to the kids? Really? Take a look at this text message you sent them.

• Can't find a job? Then why do you spend all day noodling websites that have nothing to do with work?

• In Omaha on business? So how did your iPhone "check in" on Facebook at this fancy restaurant in Boston? And who's with you in that picture?

In a recent survey of more than 800 divorce lawyers by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 92% said they've seen more cases during the last three years using evidence taken from iPhones, Droids and other smartphones.

Ferreting out the details of an illicit relationship isn't really the purpose of collecting electronic evidence, lawyers said. Rather, it's all about the custody of two things that often are at the heart of family disputes: children and money.

A lawyer with a matrimonial practice in Kansas City, Mo., once represented a man who was fighting a demand from his ex-wife for additional maintenance payments. Her Facebook postings revealed that she had been spending lavishly on a maintenance issue of her own: cosmetic surgery.

The president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said electronic evidence is particularly good at giving clues to whether one party in a divorce case is selling assets or trying to hide assets. He once found a cryptic text message that led to evidence that his client's former spouse was hiding assets.

A St. Louis Family Lawyer said that on custody issues, judges are particularly sensitive to what parents say about each other to their children. Texts often illuminate that subject.

And credibility always is a key for judges. One of the clients found a photo on her husband's cell phone of him drying a load of marijuana. She forwarded it to her own phone while he was in another room.

When the husband denied having issues with drugs, the court was treated to 30 seconds of stunned silence as he looked at the picture.

But sometimes electronic evidence makes resolving a custody or paternity issue almost too easy. A Kansas City lawyer once uncovered a YouTube video that a man, who was claiming paternity of a child, had posted a couple of years before.  During an appearance on a reality TV show, the man adamantly insisted the child wasn't his.  That video, and not the man's testimony, decided the issue.

Parties in a lawsuit generally are entitled to electronic evidence, and laying hands on it has become fairly routine, lawyers said. Estranged spouses usually can count on text messages they've sent to each other to emerge if they're material to the case.

Children and spouses' friends also are steady sources of electronic communications. And information from shared computers and telephone accounts also is fair game, lawyers said.

Lawyers can request that people not destroy electronic evidence before the lawyers look at it.

The impulsive nature of electronic communications -- often visceral and sharp -- can make it powerful evidence in a divorce case already infused with raw emotions, lawyers said. In the light of calm reflection, even an idle threat looks far worse on a page with an evidence sticker attached.

So how to avoid that moment? Lawyers advise never to write or text anything that you wouldn't want a judge to read.

To read more law related news, visit the Nation of Law blog.

Study: New Texting Laws have not reduced Crashes

Associated Press

A new study from the insurance industry finds texting while driving laws have had no immediate benefit in reducing crashes.

The study done by a branch of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety looked at crash data from four states with texting bans. It found that in three of the states - California, Louisiana, Minnesota - crashes actually increased.

Institute spokesman Russ Rader says the increase might be the result of drivers moving their phones down, of out public view, while they text and thus looking away from the road longer.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood criticized the report as misleading. He says the bans are important in helping stop deaths from distracted driving, but states must enforce them and people must obey them.