Click for full article

Tweet This Post

This is the TAC Campaigns (Australia) 20th Anniversary montage highlighting the dangers of driving while impaired. It is rather graphic but does make a point.

Tweet This Post

I’m so beyond pissed off right now I can’t stand it.  While putting on make up this morning while watching Breakfast Television, I listened as Kevin Frankish reported about how a father died in front of his two kids, ages 7 and 11, last night.

Was it a long weekend freak accident?  Did he have a heart attack?

No.  He was killed from a head-on collision by a driver who was going the wrong way on a major highway. The car is virtually unrecognizable with the front passenger seat pretty much obliterated.

The dad, the one sitting in the now gone front passenger seat, was killed instantly.  The mom who was driving was airlifted to a hospital and is in critical condition.

The two kids are unhurt.

But not really.  They aren’t fucking unhurt.  They lost their father.  Their mother is in a hospital and will hopefully recuperate but will have who knows how many months or years to get back to where she was.

The family?  That’ll never get back to where it was, will it?  Because I can tell you from experience, this crash will be the turning point in their lives.  From this point forward, life for them will be known as before the crash and after the crash.

“Alcohol is being investigated as a factor in the collision.”

And this is where I say What The Fuck?  And yes, I’m using f-bomb.  If you’re offended, then walk away from the computer.  But I earned the right to use What the fuck when two years ago a drunk driver smashed head-on into our family on a Sunday afternoon as we driving to my in-laws house to celebrate Mother’s Day.  I earned it when I had to calm my screaming, bleeding child sitting by the side of the road waiting for police and paramedics to arrive.  I earned it when I had to hold both my kids beside me on the ambulance ride to the hospital and when I had to see the drunk driver being admitted AHEAD OF US and he was so drunk he couldn’t even tell the nurse his name.

I earned it when I chose to stay sitting with my son in my lap and didn’t get up to beat the shit out of him at that very moment.

I earned it when I had to give my child drunk driving magic every single night before bed in order for him to be able to sleep and when I went to court to read our impact statement in front of a full courtroom, only to have the man who changed our family forever not look me in the eye once, not even when I held up pictures of my sons so he could see who he hurt.

I earned it when I listened as the judge revoked his license for 15 months and gave him a fine to pay and he walked away with his wife to go home to his young child.  The one who didn’t need therapy from being in a head-on collision.

So I say What The Fuck.

Because I earned it.

And now this family has earned it and they don’t deserve it.

How many people have to die or be injured in drunk driving accidents before we smarten the hell up and get stricter laws?

Tweet This Post

Do Recalls Really Make Us Safer?
Bad drivers are far more dangerous than bum Toyotas.
Slate.com
By Tom Vanderbilt
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010, at 6:52 PM ET

Have you heard about the operational crisis in the modern car? Recent news accounts are awash with evidence: cars that suddenly accelerate out of control, that careen through signalized intersections, weave across lanes with fatal consequences, spin wildly into people’s houses, and cannot stop in time to avoid killing (nonjaywalking) pedestrians.

What went wrong with the car in each of these cases? The driver. The recent coverage of the Toyota recall—which has occasioned any number of Do you feel safe driving your Toyota? polls—hints that the single greatest source of danger on the road has become the car itself. The reports have prompted some suggestions that the modern car is too computerized, too complicated. But the reality is that “vehicle factors”—which is how researchers generally classify mechanical malfunctions when assigning crash causality—cause an extremely small number of crashes in this country, coming in well below the leading categories of driver and highway factors. (Injury-reduction professionals, I should note, would rarely cite a single factor in determining the cause of a crash, preferring a matrix approach that examines how the various factors intermingle. An icy road or a speeding driver or faulty steering in and of themselves do not guarantee a crash or an injury, but each of those factors may come into play.)

Click here to read the whole article…

Tweet This Post

Greetings everyone, I’ve just launched a discussion forum for everyone to come together and discuss road safety issues and share ideas on how to resolve them.

We need to start coming together and raise our voices. Road Safety affects us all and it’s only through education, awareness and training that our roads will become safer.

Laws need to change but they need to be proactive laws, not reactive. Charging someone with dangerous driving after they caused a fatal crash isn’t the way to go. Instead we need to make driver/rider training mandatory and ensure that bad drivers don’t get on our roads to begin with. We also need to train current drivers to pay more attention to the road and impress upon them the need for further skills training.

Safer roads start with safer drivers.

Please check it out at http://www.roadawareness.org/forum/

Tweet This Post

The RoadAwareness Campaign is proud to have been covered by the media several times, not only locally where it began in Southern Ontario but the word is now spreading across North America and the rest of the world. Our website is now being viewed by visitors from around the globe. Here is some of the media coverage we’ve gotten so far:
http://www.roadawareness.org/about-us/media-coverage/

In addition to awareness rallies, RoadAwareness also performed a Distracted Driving Experiment to highlight the dangers of using your cell phone while driving and was successful in showing that hands-free kits are really no safer than using a hand-held phone while talking. In addition, the results of texting while driving were jaw-dropping. All of the participants were far more likely to loose control of their vehicles and hit obstacles…and most did. Click here for more details…

RoadAwareness is joining forces with some great partners in 2010. We are also pleased to announce our involvement in Belt Drive Betty’s Awareness Conga to the Wharf Rat Rally in Digby, Nova Scotia. For more information on this rally, please check out and join this group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=291129346434
We hope to assist with arranging various awareness rallies along their route across the country. Stay tuned and join us along the way.

Another notable mention is the establishment of some great working relationships with Young Drivers of Canada, the Traffic Services Division of Toronto Police Services and Queensway AUDI. We continue to solidify these alliances and look forward to working with them further in 2010. Developing new relationships, on an ongoing basis, is a primary focus for us.

Please join the the Facebook Group and be sure to invite all your friends to check out our website and join our Facebook group as road safety affects us all. Safer roads begin with safer drivers!

Share

Tweet This Post

Tweet This Post

02/07/2010
By: Shaun de Jager

Anti-Cell Phone Laws are popping up all around the world as governments attempt to make our roads safer by curbing cell phone usage while driving. Especially text messaging and emailing while driving. But not everyone seems to have the self control to kick the habit despite the potential punishments from law enforcement or worse causing personal injury or death either to themselves or someone else.

In the past couple years, several products or programs have been introduced on the market that either restrict the functionality of cell phones while in motion (preventing the phone from sending or receiving calls, emails or text messages) or adds features to the phone, such as speech recognition programs that read you your messages.

Some of new tools work rather well, whereas others don’t and of course prices can vary. All of them have limitations and only work on certain phones (Blackberrys, iPhones, various other SmartPhones, etc.).

Most of these tools are software based and need to be loaded into your phone. Many of the ones on the market require GPS as a working function of the phone or use cell tower triangulation to detect movement. While movement is detected, the software blocks incoming calls, texts and emails and also blocks the ability to send any (emergency calls are never restricted though). Other programs read incoming messages to you automatically without any input from the user (I rather liked this one but more on that later).

Some of the draw backs here is that in each case, a data plan is required on the phone. In the case where the program automatically replies for you with a simple “I’ll get back to you shortly” text message, a text messaging plan is highly recommended. The means of motion detection is also an issue. Programs that use cell tower triangulation are the least accurate because the signal varies even if you aren’t moving. Therefore, the program could restrict your phones functions while you are sitting in a coffee shop. GPS based programs are certainly more accurate in this regard. These motion based programs are programmed with a speed threshold so that your phone still works at walking speed but not all of them do. Something to research if you decide to use one of these systems. The other variable is cost. Some have working free versions but the fully functioning ones (that restrict your phone the most) have fees. Some only charge a one time fee to fully activate the software and others charge a monthly subscription fee, which can be rather expensive over a whole year.

The one that I took a liking too was DriveSafe.ly Pro. This application gets downloaded into your smartphone and reads your incoming messages. It doesn’t make any attempt to restrict your phones functions so it does take will-power to not reply to those messages. I tested this on my Blackberry Curve and found it to work quite well, although I never got the auto-reply feature to work properly. In this case, when a message is received the phone connects to the DriveSafe.ly servers and uses there advanced iSpeech software to read your messages to you while you drive. This happens automatically so no input is required while driving maintaining full hands-free functionality. Now your curiosity has been satisfied and you can decide to leave well enough alone or find a parking lot to stop in so that you can reply. Once again though, a data plan is required to connect to their servers. Those who receive sensitive and confidential information on their phones may not like this as an option for obvious reasons.

Additionally, if you are a person who receives a lot of messages, you may find this program annoying after a while when your phone keeps talking, talking, talking to you while you are driving. This could end up being a case where the cure is worse than the disease causing you further distractions. If you are one of those people…put your phone on silent mode and forget about it while driving. Everyone trying to reach you can wait for your safe return.

One of the other options to consider uses a combination of hardware in your car and software on your phone. In this case, CellControl.com comes to mind. This works directly with your vehicle to detect motion by plugging a specially designed module into the OBDII port of your car that is usually located under steering wheel (this port is only found on cars made in 1996 or newer). The module is then paired to your Bluetooth enabled smartphone with the CellControl software running. As soon as the vehicle moves, it restricts the pre-selected features of your phone. Selecting what you can and can’t do with your phone is decided via an online web-portal for registered users (yes this is a paid subscription based service) and those details are sent to the software in your phone. What’s nice about this system is the flexibility. You can program certain phone numbers that can bypass the lockdown while driving (like from your spouse or child’s school in the event of an emergency).

In the end though, these are just tools and it’s still the responsibility of the driver to drive safely. If you decide to check out these tools, do your research and pick one that suites your needs.

Share

Tweet This Post