Smith’s mother, Linda Doyle of Oklahoma City, died hours later.

Ever since, Smith, a 35-year-old Grapevine resident, has been searching for ways to prevent what she calls the senseless deaths caused by distracted driving. On Tuesday, she found her outlet with the unveiling of FocusDriven, a national nonprofit organization that will push for bans on talking and texting while driving and work to raise awareness about the issue.

“Our vision is to prevent injuries and save lives by eliminating cellphone use while driving,” said Smith, the mother of two daughters. “Our mission is to support victims of cellphone distracted driving and families of victims by putting a human face on the disastrous impact of the behavior.”

The announcement at the U.S. Transportation Department’s headquarters comes as a separate national group says Texas has work to do to make its highways safer. A review released last week by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety rated Texas in the middle of the pack among states, with “numerous gaps” in its highway safety laws.

Among the group’s recommendation for the states is a ban on all drivers texting behind the wheel. Texas has limited texting restrictions covering drivers younger than 18, bus drivers, motorists in school zones and drivers who are transporting a child.

“Texas has progressed slowly on its own,” Smith said. “But we need to do more to get information out there.”

FocusDriven will be modeled after Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In addition to awareness and legislative efforts, FocusDriven will serve as a support organization for victims and families of victims. Smith will be president, with the first chapter based in Texas, but she hopes chapters will eventually spread across the country.

Source: dallasnews.com

A project will begin Jan. 4 to install 19 miles of reinforced steel cables that will prevent high-risk head-on collisions along U.S. Highway 190.

The $1.5 million project is part of an ongoing effort by the Texas Department of Transportation to save lives along U.S. 190. TxDOT installed cement barriers along U.S. 190 from Fort Hood to Copperas Cove in late 2008.

The cement barriers came too late for Leslie Spear. She died in June 2008 when a vehicle driven by a 23-year-old Fort Hood soldier crossed U.S. 190 into oncoming traffic. The Cadillac Deville struck Spear’s Ford Mustang. The accident also claimed the lives of the soldier and a passenger in Spear’s vehicle.

Much like the cement barriers, the cables are a long overdue fix to a flaw that exposes drivers to potentially fatal head-on collisions.

Cross-median accidents, though rare, provide an “exponential increase in serious injury or death,” Harker Heights Police Chief Mike Gentry said.

The cables could have contained the damages from a November crash that thrust one of Gentry’s officers into months of exhausting rehabilitation. Officer Jeremy Hempel was severely injured when his Geo Metro struck a deer, crossed into oncoming traffic and crashed into a Mazda 3 on Nov. 3.

Hempel’s accident is the latest in a long list of severe crashes. TxDOT and the Department of Public Safety do not keep numbers on cross-median collisions, but acknowledge the barrier is “necessary,” TxDOT spokesman Ken Roberts said.

TxDOT opted for steel cables instead of the cement barrier because the cables are the safer choice for roadways with wide medians, Roberts said.

The cement barriers stop vehicles, but cause more damage and risk for drivers. They work best with small medians that allow for little or no stopping distance.

With more median space, the cables and accompanying posts give gradually and catch the vehicle before it strikes oncoming traffic. The cable helps stabilize the vehicle.

“It’s not like sliding down a nice, soft rope. It is a steel-braided cable. It will bring the vehicle to a halt, but it’s not like running into a concrete barrier,” Roberts said.

The cable will force law enforcement officials to revamp traffic patrols since the cables will prevent them from crossing the median.

State troopers often position themselves opposite traffic to track speeders. When a speeder is found, troopers whirl their car around, cross the median and chase the speeder.

The cable will compel troopers to track speeders in the same direction they are positioned, Trooper Karl Pierce said.

TxDOT anticipates no lane closures during the project, which is expected to be finished by the summer. Warning signs will be posted alerting drivers to adjust their speeds and watch out for workers.

Roberts urges drivers to drive defensively so no one is injured during a project TxDOT hopes will reduce crashes and save lives.

Source: kdhnews.com

It was brought together by the group Fair Affordable Insurance Rates, or FAIR for short, and they’ll need to collect 304-thousand signatures before it can go before the legislature. If they can do that and the legislature does not address it or rejects it, the measure would go before voters in November 2010.

The Insurance Institute of Michigan argues that premiums are a reflection of cost and that the result of passing such a proposal would have unintended consequences that could result in higher rates.

Source: http://new.wkzo.com/news/articles/2009/nov/10/petition-seeks-slash-auto-insurance-rates/

Progressive said Wednesday that it is seeing signs of the continued recession as drivers buy auto insurance, and possibly in an increase in the number of claims made for personal injury protection after an auto accident.

Personal injury protection (PIP) “is the one we are worried about,” said Glenn M. Renwick, Progressive’s president and chief executive officer during a call Wednesday that coincided with the filing of the company’s quarterly earnings report. “One issue that could creep in is fraud, you could maybe relate that to unemployment, but that would be speculative.”

Progressive, one of the largest auto insurers, said that overall, it had increased its auto insurance rates by about 2% to 3% so far this year for policies sold by agents, and by about 1% or so for policies sold directly to consumers through the internet or via phone.

But overall, consumers still ended up paying slightly less for insurance by raising deductibles or because of a trend towards driving older cars, which he said is another sign of the weak economy.

Progressive, which is a savvy marketer, has taken customers away from other auto insurers that have raised rates more, he said.

Last month, Progressive reported third-quarter profit of 40 cents a share, on premiums that grew 1%, to $3.55 billion, from the year-ago quarter.

For the month of October, Progressive reported a net profit of 16 cents per share and a 3% increase in premiums, to $1.3 billion, from October 2008. Progressive reports its earnings monthly.

Progressive’s premium increases come as many other insurers have reported falling overall premiums.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091111-709421.html

Many Americans have done it: gone outside to an ice-covered vehicle on a cold winter’s morning, chipped just enough ice off the windshield to see through and driven away.

Peephole driving dramatically reduces a driver’s field of vision, and it increases the likelihood that snow or ice can become dislodged and hit another vehicle or a pedestrian, according to police and safety advocates.

“Everybody is in such a hurry to get where they’ve got to go, they don’t want to take the time to completely defrost their windows,” says Sgt. Scott Kristiansen of the Buffalo Grove Police Department in suburban Chicago. “That puts everybody at risk.

“Reasonable people who would never think of leaving their driveway with worn tires or bad brakes will routinely drive their children to school after scraping just a small peephole with which to see out of the vehicle,” says Kristiansen, a 26-year veteran in the village of about 42,000 northwest of Chicago.

In Illinois and some other states, police can cite drivers for obstruction of a window or obstructed vision. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, drivers can be cited if their failure to remove snow or ice causes injury or property damage.

New Jersey strengthened its law last week. Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, signed legislation requiring drivers to “make all reasonable efforts” to remove snow or ice from the roof, hood, trunk and windshield. For truckers, the law applies to the cab, the top of a trailer or semi-trailer and the top of a freight container. Drivers who fail to comply face a $25-$75 fine.

“There are many stories of innocent drivers who have died or been seriously injured because of ice or snow dislodged from a truck or car,” says Republican state Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz, a sponsor of the law. “Finally, common-sense legislation that protects drivers by requiring the removal of potential flying debris is now law.”

There are no reliable statistics on the number of people hurt or killed because of peephole driving, says David Weinstein, spokesman for AAA clubs of New Jersey. “Often the driver doesn’t know what happened and drives away,” he says. “Or they do know what happened and know they’re culpable and drive away.”

Technical Trooper Tim McCool of the Kansas Highway Patrol says he’s seen peephole driving increase in his 27-year career as people grow more impatient. He estimates that peephole drivers have 2%-3% of the normal field of vision. As winter looms, the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles advises, “Peephole driving is an invitation to disaster.”

Source: usatoday.com

But several models from Ford Motor Co. are now consistently scoring above Honda and Toyota, the perennial leaders.

While Toyota’s youth-oriented Scion brand finished first for the second year in a row, several Ford models, including the midsize Ford Fusion and its cousin, the Mercury Milan, consistently have been at or near the top of their classes, a trend that led Consumer Reports editors to declare that Ford is now making some vehicles with world-class reliability.

After Scion, Honda, Toyota, Infiniti and Acura rounded out the top five brands in reliability based on surveys taken in March of subscribers who own or lease 1.4 million vehicles.

Honda’s Insight hybrid was the most reliable vehicle in the survey, while the luxury SUV Volkswagen Touareg was the least reliable. The survey gauges how dependable 2010 model cars and trucks will be based on reliability in the past.

Asian automakers have scored well over the years because they traditionally paid more attention to quality and have tried to perfect manufacturing procedures. The U.S. automakers, however, claim that they have caught up.

“Ford is definitely doing something right,” said Rik Paul, the magazine’s automotive editor.

Ford’s Detroit-area competitors, General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, didn’t fare as well, however.

Chrysler had only one model that Consumer Reports recommended based on reliability and its staff test, and the Chrysler brand finished last out of 33 brands sold in the U.S. One third of Chrysler’s models were much worse than average in reliability.

Six models from GM were recommended by the magazine, but it’s still inconsistent. Only 21 of 48 models the magazine studied scored average or better in reliability.

The relatively poor performance by GM and Chrysler could hurt efforts to fight back from financial problems that led to stays in bankruptcy court earlier this year. Auto industry officials say the nonprofit Consumer Reports is among the most widely consulted sources when people buy vehicles.

Officials at GM and Chrysler say they are committed to improving quality.

At Ford, though, four-cylinder versions of the Fusion and Milan finished second in the family car category, beaten only by Toyota’s Prius gas-electric hybrid. The Fusion and Milan outscored Toyota Motor Corp.’s Camry and Honda Motor Co.’s Accord, the two top-selling cars in the U.S. “which many people view as the paradigms of reliability,” Paul said.

Of the 51 Ford, Lincoln or Mercury models in the survey, 46 were ranked average or better in reliability.

Yet while Mercury was the only Detroit brand to finish in the top 10 (10th), the Ford brand finished 16th, while Lincoln finished 20th. That’s largely due to higher-end models — many with all-wheel-drive — scoring below average in reliability, said Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ senior automotive engineer.

“Those types of problems are keeping them from being truly world class,” Fisher said.

Bennie Fowler, Ford’s vice president of global quality, said the company is applying the same methods that worked with the Fusion and other models to the ones that didn’t perform as well.

Toyota, despite a recent spate of recalls, and Honda consistently build cars that cause few problems for Consumer Reports readers, Paul said. Ford, he said, is approaching that consistency. While GM has some bright spots, it has a ways to go to match the Japanese.

The Dodge Ram pickup, the only Chrysler model recommended by the magazine, did well in road tests and was average in reliability. The recommendation is important, though, because the Ram is Chrysler’s top-selling model.

Paul said automakers often can only make quality improvements when new models come out, and those have been few for Chrysler in the last two years.

“Hopefully for them, when they do release new models, they will still have the same level of quality that we saw in the Ram,” he said.

Source: yahoo news

Dealers, through their main trade group, have complained the Transportation Department’s online processing system was cumbersome to use and too slow to respond to some 700,000 rebate applications between the first week of July and the third week of August when funding was nearly exhausted.

Most of the 3,000 people involved in processing are contractors, and government officials have acknowledged computer system breakdowns and other problems handling the avalanche of applications from 16,000 dealers.

The government offered consumers up to $4,500 when they traded in older gas guzzlers for more fuel efficient vehicles. The incentive was far more popular than expected and boosted depressed U.S. auto sales and overall U.S. economic output.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Japanese carmakers were big winners.

Transportation Department officials said the government has so far processed about $500 million in rebates from 120,000 sales. The goal in coming weeks is to add more workers to process about $100 million in rebates per day.

Citigroup Inc (C.N) is managing the blizzard of paperwork.

Bailey Wood, legislative affairs director for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), said the pace must be faster.

“We’re far from solving the ultimate problem,” Wood said. “Dealers are still floating the government billions of dollars.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, speaking in Chicago on Thursday, called the program a lifeline for manufacturers and dealers and that the administration would submit a formal report to Congress next week, which authorized the $3 billion in funding.

LaHood said any thought of resurrecting the program, which no one has proposed, would be up to Congress.

“We have been criticized for spending a lot of money and $3 billion is not inexpensive. So we’ll leave that decision up to Congress,” LaHood said.

Source: reuters.com

“Two months ago I had 80 of these, and now I only have a handful,” dealer Butch Watson said as he pointed to a few extended cab Silverado pickup trucks hulking in one corner of his lot near Dallas.

They say everything is bigger in Texas and pickup trucks are no exception.

Not only do they bulk up here — there are heftier “Texas editions” of some models such as the Chevrolet Silverado built by General Motors Co — but the state is also the world’s largest and richest single market for pickup trucks.

So analysts are scanning Texas for the first glimmer of recovery in truck sales that would give a much needed lift to U.S. automakers laid low by the global recession and last year’s historically high gas prices.

“Our pick-up sales are up 18 percent in the first eight months of this year,” said Watson, whose Chuck Fairbanks Chevrolet is one of the largest dealerships in north Texas.

Many of his sales for larger models such as one-ton trucks are to horse and cattle ranchers, Watson said.

Erich Merkle, an industry consultant at Autoconomy.com, said evidence from dealers and automakers points to the start of a recovery in both the economy and the truck market.

“The volume and where the recovery is going to come is in pickup trucks.” Merkle said. “Pickup trucks are not dead. They are far from dead in this country.”

Ford Motor Co, the longtime leader in pickup trucks, also has seen tentative signs that the worst is over. The automaker reported a monthly sales increase for its F-Series pickup trucks in August, the first in nearly three years.

Since pickup trucks are the staple vehicle in the U.S. construction industry, many analysts tie a rebound in sales to an uptick in spending on housing and infrastructure.

Source: reuters.com

Asian brands captured 52.3 percent of the US market in August — a five-point jump from a year earlier — while the Detroit Three saw their share slide 4.5 points to a record low of 40.8 percent.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler first saw their share slip below 50 percent in July 2007 after steadily losing ground to foreign rivals for decades.

All three have undergone a series of painful restructuring programs and both GM and Chrysler were forced to seek bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

European brands saw their share slide 0.5 points to 6.9 percent in August, according to Autodata.

The stunning surge from Asian automakers came as US auto sales posted their first monthly gain since October 2007, rising one percent to 1.26 million vehicles from 1.25 million in August 2008.

Hyundai, Ford, Toyota and Honda were the big winners after posting double-digit gains while General Motors and Chrysler continued to report sharp losses despite the increased showroom traffic.

August’s seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of 14.09 units, the highest since May 2008, was up from an adjusted rate of 11.24 million in July and 9.69 million in June, but still well below the 16 to 17 million vehicles sold every year for the past decade.

Source: yahoo news

Vehicle August 2009 sales Percent change

1. Toyota Camry/Solara 54,396 28.2

2. Ford F-series 45,590 17.1

3. Honda Civic 43,294 49.6

4. Toyota Corolla/Matrix 43,061 51.9

5. Honda Accord 39,726 -5.4

6. Chevrolet Silverado 32,421 -39.6

7. Honda CR-V 30,284 58.3

8. Nissan Altima 26,833 10.1

9. Ford Focus 25,547 61.9

10. Hyundai Elantra 21,673 124.4

Source: yahoo news