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.

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.”

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

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.

It could be that drivers who continue to text while driving are doing it more surreptitiously, hiding their phones from view of other drivers and law enforcement, increasing the risk of an accident even more, the institute says.

Text messaging while driving has been banned in 30 states now, with 11 of those bans enacted this year.

“Texting bans haven’t reduced crashes at all. In a perverse twist, crashes increased in three of the four states we studied after bans were enacted,” said Adrian Lund, president of both the Highway Loss Data Institute and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in a statement. Both institutes are funded by insurance companies, and the information was shared Tuesday with the Governors Highway Safety Association annual meeting.

“It’s an indication that texting bans might even increase the risk of texting for drivers who continue to do so despite the laws,” Lund said.

The institute’s findings about texting while driving bans, Lund said, is the same as its previous finding about bans on cell phone use while driving not reducing accidents, calling “into question the way policymakers are trying to address the problem of distracted driving crashes.”

Younger drivers are more likely than older ones to text-while-driving — although that’s not always the case — the institute said, finding in all four states, “crashes increased among drivers younger than 25 after the all-driver bans took effect … The largest crash increase of all (12 percent) following enactment of a texting ban was among young drivers in California.”

“The point of texting bans is to reduce crashes, and by this essential measure the laws are ineffective,” Lund said.

A lack of enforcement is “a likely reason texting bans aren’t reducing crashes,” the institute found, saying that survey results indicate many drivers, “especially younger ones, shrug off these bans. Among 18-24 year-olds, the group most likely to text, 45 percent reported doing so anyway in states that bar all drivers from texting. This is just shy of the 48 percent of drivers who reported texting in states without bans. Many respondents who knew it was illegal to text said they didn’t think police were strongly enforcing the bans.”

Still, Lund said, that finding doesn’t explain why crashes have increased after texting messaging bans. “If drivers were disregarding the bans, then the crash patterns should have remained steady. So clearly drivers did respond to the bans somehow, and what they might have been doing was moving their phones down and out of sight when they texted, in recognition that what they were doing was illegal. This could exacerbate the risk of texting by taking drivers’ eyes further from the road and for a longer time.”

 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.

States, pushed by the National Safety Council and advocacy groups, are responding with tougher rules, primarily the graduated license law, of which all 50 states now have some version. New York followed suit this year, with Gov. David Paterson signing the bill in August and the last provisions kicking in on Sept. 1.
The approach basically builds more time and training into the driving requirements for 16- and 17-year-olds. It mandates more instruction and more time behind the wheel, including more night driving.
Under the new law, teen drivers under 18 with a learner’s permit must wait six months before they take the road test.

The new law doesn’t affect the long-standing, triple-rung system of driving instruction in New York.

First, parents and guardians are an accepted, if often terrified, option. Second, school districts and BOCES have extensive and well-regarded drivers’ education programs.

Third are the private driving schools, which provide much the same services as the schools, though through a more personalized, convenient process.

Local driving school directors said they were pleased with the changes but had yet to see much change in enrollment.

“Actually, business is down a little,” said Judy Karch, partner at ABC School of Driving in Rochester. She speculated that stretching out the time between when a teen gets a driver’s permit and takes the road test may build in a little procrastination.
The graduated-license law requires 50 hours of supervised instruction, up from 20 hours, and 15 hours of that must be after sunset.

Additionally, young drivers must complete a five-hour pre-licensing class, either in school or at a private driving school, and take another class if they want an insurance discount.

Driving school instructors interviewed were unanimous in their support of tougher rules, though they argued that the state road test is unequal to the task of assessing driver readiness.
“In England, the road test is 45 minutes,” Scott said. “Here, it’s 10 or 15 minutes.”

At this point, it’s not clear if the added mandates will translate to more business for driving schools.
“We thought it would at first,” Scott said. “But we haven’t seen it. We have seen more students in the required classroom training. They need the certificate to take the road test.”

The new law accepts a parent’s or guardian’s statement that the 50-hour mandate has been met. “Parents face legal penalties if they falsify the document,” Peter Bucci of the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
Law or no law, parents are facing the music of grinding gears and scraped curbs.

“I’m teaching my daughter,” Pat McCormick of Rochester said. He was at the Morgan School this week so his teenage daughter, Maggie, and her friend, Grace Guadagnino, could take the five-hour state-required class.
“She’s in driver’s ed at school and she’s been driving back and forth to our home in Canandaigua,” McCormick said. “I expect she’ll be ready to take her road test as soon as the six months are up.”

McCormick said the stricter law makes sense. “They need to get as much practice as possible. Having your child driving is a scary thing for a parent.”

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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)

Original Article: http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/Texting-and-driving-could-be-a-deadly-combination-102016908.html

Original Article: http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/niagara/App-hopes-to-curb-texting-while-driving?ref=scroller&categoryId=10001

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.