A clip from Dr. Phil showing how young drivers just don’t get it….at all! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDlYSPVro0Q
We need to make a change at the root of the problem. Smart phones just aren’t that smart if they are causing all the tragedies that they do.
Good For LYF releases first video in first effort to gain support for the upcoming national launch of the LYF App, designed to prevent distracted driving by rewarding users who use the app and make the right LYF choice.
Word to youth: Texting, driving don’t mix
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
Mariah West was a devoted texter.
At 18, she could hold dinner conversations with her family while surreptitiously texting with friends, hiding her cellphone under the table.
Everyone in the Rogers, Ark., high school senior’s circle had warned her about texting while driving; they’d see her car swerve and know what she was doing. It cost her her life.
Last May, on the day before graduation, Mariah was driving to a Minor League Baseball game in Springfield, Mo., texting with the player who’d invited her. As she was sending him a text, she lost control of the car, which clipped a bridge, skidded on its roof along the edge of the bridge and flipped back into oncoming traffic.
Mariah, who had been getting directions to the Springfield Cardinals’ stadium, was partially ejected, her skull crushed, says her mother, Merry Dye, 45. The last message Mariah got: “Where U At.”
Now, Dye is working to spare other teens and their parents from a similar loss. She is part of a campaign against texting and driving that AT&T is launching today. The effort uses television, radio, print, the Internet, shopping malls, even the protective “clings” over the front of new cellphones, to target young drivers.
“I know there are a lot of laws being passed, but that isn’t what’s going to stop it,” says Dye, assistant program coordinator for a television station in Springdale, Ark. “The hope is to reach the hearts of these kids and their parents, to help them understand that nobody is immune.”
In focus groups and exchanges on its popular Facebook site, the company has heard from many teens, says Daryl Evans, AT&T’s vice president of consumer advertising. “In our focus groups, everybody acknowledged the dangers of texting while driving,” he says. “But it was amazing how many people said, ‘I know it’s dangerous, but I’ve figured out how to do it safely’ or ‘I can put the phone on top of the steering wheel and do it.’ ”
AT&T’s “Txtng & Drivng … It Can Wait” campaign features parents of young texting-and-driving victims and the final text messages the young drivers received just before they died. The campaign’s theme: “No text is worth dying over.”
It’s difficult to know how successful such a campaign can be, says Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. “The great majority of traditional public awareness campaigns on traffic safety have, unfortunately, not been terribly successful,” he says.
The successful model, he says, is the national Click It or Ticket seat belt campaign, which works because it has a law generally accepted by the public, a visible enforcement component and a big public awareness effort.
In 2008, 5,870 people died and more than a half-million were hurt in crashes involving a distracted or inattentive driver, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Young, inexperienced drivers are disproportionately represented among these drivers.
Not worth dying for
The theme for AT&T’s campaign grew out of one of its focus groups, Evans says. “The group leader said, ‘Everybody pull out your phone. Pull up the very last text you had before you came in here.’ He said, ‘Are any of those texts worth dying for?’ The air came out of the room. It went absolutely silent. And every time we did it after that, the same thing happened. We knew we had our aha! moment,” he says.
The campaign, which will include advertising in 72 shopping malls, also features an online resource center, att.com/txtngcanwait, where educators, parents and teens can download information about texting while driving and sign a pledge not to do it. AT&T also has launched a Facebook application, at facebook.com/att.
Dallas-based AT&T, which serves about 85 million wireless customers, is the second communications company to enter the fray against texting while driving. Verizon Wireless launched its national “Don’t Text and Drive” campaign last year.
The campaign comes as the movement against texting while driving nears critical mass. At least 23 states this year have considered bans on texting while driving; 10 of them restrict texting by novice drivers. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia prohibit texting while driving for all drivers, the Governors Highway Safety Association says.
In January, the federal government banned texting on handheld devices while driving for bus drivers and commercial truckers. Allstate Insurance launched an anti-texting effort last year. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey devoted shows to the topic.
‘He knew better’
A year ago, John Bradley Breen, known as “JB” to his friends in St. Francisville, Ill., was a young Marine, 23, who had a young daughter. He was home on leave preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
He was an avowed texter: The day before he died, Breen was helping to bury the family dog — and busily texting while digging, says his mother, Teresa Breen, 47. “My husband said, ‘JB, put that phone down. You’re obsessed with that thing. It’s taking over your life.’ ”
The next day, while driving and texting with a young woman, Breen lost control of his pickup. The truck veered off the road. He was ejected and thrown 150-200 feet, his mother says.
“He knew better,” says Breen, a customer service representative at a seed company. “He couldn’t do it on the base. He just came home and got lax.”
Her son had been discussing a date with the young woman, Breen says. They had planned to get together soon. His last text message, which he never got to send: “Yeah T-.” “The girl wondered why she never received a text message back,” Breen says. “She never knew anything had happened until she got to work the next day.”
With a problem as serious as distracted driving, there’s no quick fix. It takes good laws. It takes tough enforcement. And it takes increased awareness and personal responsibility from every driver on our nation’s roadways.
Students in Orlando got the message yesterday as the University of Central Florida’s Student Government Association kicked off their week-long “Put Down Ur Cell Fone” campaign to discourage texting and talking while driving…
You can read more about UCF’s campaign against distracted driving at fastlane.dot.gov
By Suzanne Choney
Click here for original article.
Text messaging-while-driving bans have not resulted in a reduction in crashes, and may even be “ineffective,” according to a new report from the Highway Loss Data Institute.
If anything, the institute said, in states where texting while driving is illegal, there appears to be a “slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes.” The finding is based on the institute’s comparisons of claims in four states — California, Washington, Minnesota and Louisiana — before and after texting bans took effect, compared with patterns of claims in nearby states.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle : LINK TO ARTICLE
You don’t really know fear until your teenager takes the wheel for the first time.
Suddenly, the whole thing — agreeing to instruct, agreeing to use your own car, having kids in the first place — seems an irreversible mistake.
Larry Scott remembers the moment well. Except that he was the nervous kid on the receiving end of a parental meltdown.
“My dad was the worst instructor in the history of the world,” he said. “He carried a stick with him when my brother was driving. Fortunately, I learned anyway.”
He did more than learn, actually, Scott is vice president of the Morgan School of Driving, one of the area’s largest private driving schools with offices in Rochester, Greece and Fairport.
As Scott’s father perhaps intuitively realized, teenagers and automobiles can be a lethal combination. According to the National Safety Council, a full high-school classroom of teenagers dies each day in automobile accidents in the United States. One out of every five 16-year-olds will be in a crash. Texting is so prevalent among young motorists that a new western New York online business, GoodForLYF, rewards teen drivers with retail discounts if they refrain from the practice.
Such great momentum and we are so pleased and thankful for the pour out of support and involvement. Thank you to the local WNY media to help get the word out about our LYF app!
It really is a great cause and we’re doing our best to get things moving quickly.
Here are direct links to the news stories and video coverage:
WBEN, News Radio 930
http://www.wben.com/Rewards-for-Not-Texting-While-Driving–There-s-an-/8053504
The Buffalo News
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/article179312.ece
TMC News – Niagara Gazette
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/09/02/4987907.htm
WIVB, News 4
http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/niagara/App-hopes-to-curb-texting-while-driving
WKBW, News 7
http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/Texting-and-driving-could-be-a-deadly-combination-102016908.html
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More to Come! (Check back for updates)
LYF App Launch – News Coverage
WKBW News 7 – September 1, 2010
Original Article: http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/Texting-and-driving-could-be-a-deadly-combination-102016908.html
LYF App Launch – News Coverage
WIVB Channel 4 News – September 1, 2010
Original Article: http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/niagara/App-hopes-to-curb-texting-while-driving?ref=scroller&categoryId=10001
The LYF Launch – Press Conference was a huge success – Check out the news tonight and tomorrow. More news to come!
Thanks to all for support and involvement, and another big thanks to Kelly Cline for her participation! Such an amazing cause and we can really make a difference 
Download the LYF app today!
Video coverage will be posted soon.
