Just 71.5 percent of teens have valid driver's license

Phones have gotten smart. Drivers? Not so much.

Phones have gotten smart. Drivers? Not so much.

Our yearning to stay connected with the world at all times has made Georgia’s roads an increasingly dangerous place to be.

Now, the numbers make clear that what we sensed is true.You already sensed it just driving around. People drive like birdbrains: A car blows blithely through a red light (a doctor on her phone once T-boned my family van), the driver ahead of you who just can’t stay in a lane, the SUV that lags behind others in the flow of traffic and then suddenly rushes to catch up.

Last year, 1,554 people died in motor vehicle accidents in Georgia, a 33 percent increase from 2014 when 1,170 were killed. Georgia’s increase in deaths was more than twice the national increase during that time. In all, 40,200 people died in the U.S. last year, the first time it reached that level in a decade.

For years, highways had gotten safer, with better-designed cars, almost universal seat belt usage and alcohol-related deaths dropping to 10,000 a year, down from an average of 14,000 a decade earlier.

But what is almost certainly driving the increase in deaths is that many drivers have the attention span of a gnat because they are gawking at their phones.

Yes, we know that texting, Facebooking and checking email while driving qualifies you for a Darwin Award. In fact, 98 percent of respondents to a study commissioned by AT&T said exactly that. Still, 74 percent of those same respondents still did just that.

The disconnect is a familiar one. Generally, we think we’re smarter than the average bear.

“Motorists report that they use a cell phone because they harbor the belief they are personally capable of driving safely while doing so,” said a study from the University of Utah. “However, they also see other driver’s usage as much riskier than their own and consequently tend to support laws to restrict the behavior. That is, motorists want the laws to apply to the other driver.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 3,500 people were killed because of distracted driving. But that number, almost everyone believes, is woefully low.

“That’s just the ones we can prove; it’s probably much higher,” said Harris Blackwood, director of the Georgia Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. “We have this 800-pound monster. We know it’s a problem but there’s no way to measure it.”

There are ways to measure how distracted driving played into fatal crashes. But it can be difficult. Skid marks can determine whether a driver was speeding. Investigators can draw blood from a corpse to measure alcohol. But what was going on in a driver’s mind in those last few moments of life is more difficult to determine.

Cops are getting better at cataloging such instances and are getting more aggressive about enforcing a 2010 law that outlawed texting behind the wheel.

“Last year, the state Department of Driver Services processed 3,866 citations for texting while driving and underage wireless use,” my colleague David Wickert wrote last week. “That’s up more than 30 percent from 2014.”

A couple of years ago, Marietta officers posed as construction workers on the street to catch drivers texting. Marietta Police Chief Dan Flynn told me that cutting down on smartphone use while driving must go the same route as drunk driving once did — making it socially unacceptable.

“The mentality for drunk driving used to be, ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’” Flynn said. “But that whole scene changed.”

Still, he said, it’s hard to focus on writing such tickets when the public clamors for burglaries to get solved and drunks to get caught.

The Georgia Legislature outlawed texting at the wheel in 2010, but technological advancements since then — and the ubiquity of smartphones — make the problems of seven years ago seem quaint.

State Rep. John Carson, a Marietta Republican, has introduced a resolution to create a study committee to try to figure out some way of dealing with it.

“This is something that must be addressed,” he said. “We have to do something.”

The comparison to drunk driving is an apt one because a 2004 study found that a motorist talking on a cellphone has the same impairment of a driver who is legally drunk — a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent.

But back then, the iPhone, which was released in 2007, was just a gleam in Steve Jobs’ eye.

If talking on a cellphone — it doesn’t matter if it’s hands-free or not — is like blowing a
.08 BAC, then watching a video on YouTube or checking Facebook while driving is like smoking crack behind the wheel.

Studies show that people who constantly check incoming texts, tweets and Facebook messages do so for a little bump of dopamine in the brain. So if the phone buzzes, chirps or dings while driving, then the hand can’t resist reaching for it.

David Strayer, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Utah, has since 2000 been at the forefront of research into how cellphone use affects driving.

Years ago he wrote, “When a driver talks on a cellular phone, visual scanning is disrupted, prediction of hazards is impaired, identification of objects and events in the driving environment is retarded, decision for action is altered, and appropriate reactions are delayed.”

In an interview this week, he said:

“As alarmed as we were with cellphones, the use of smartphones and all the social media functions make those (previous) concerns pale in comparison. We are tracking a significant distraction with something that is worse.”

Please be safe out there. And keep your eyes on the road.

Nathan’s Driving School Teenage Drivers Education Program Offered at Chamblee High

on: December 27, 2016In: Chamblee, Education1 Comment

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Chamblee, GA, December 27, 2016 – The Post Reports – Nathan’s Driving School, Inc. has announced their Teenage Drivers Education Program at Chamblee Charter High School.  The program offers 30 hours of classroom instruction that is tailored to the needs of teenagers, and valuable Behind the Wheel Instruction with Nathan’s Licensed Instructors. The Behind the Wheel Sessions are private lessons with home and/or school pick up.

The basic course is a combination of thirty (30) hours of class instruction and six (6) hours of private in-car instruction. We also offer an expanded program with thirty (30) hours of classroom instruction and eight (8) hours of in-car instruction. Students who successfully complete the course will earn a Certificate of Completion which will entitle them to receive possible insurance discounts and qualify for a $150.00 Georgia income tax credit.

One Spring Session is available. Register before January 7 and receive $20 off.  Spring Session will be Tuesdays and Thursdays after school from 3:30-6:30 pm.

This course also meets the requirements of the “Joshua Law” which went into effect on January 1, 2007. By meeting the Joshua Law requirement, the student also has the opportunity of taking the State Road Test within the program at a discounted price.

Interested students should sign up promptly. Remember that the class size for each session is limited.

Register today at CHAMBLEEHIGHDRIVERSEDUCATION.COM.   Call Nathan’s Driving School at 770-454-9100 for more information.

Source: http://brookhavenpost.co/...

Chamblee Cares and Atlanta Area Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Chris Owens from the Atlanta Area Foundation for Suicide Prevention will be talking with Chamblee Cares counselor on November 8th at CCHS. She will be presenting the Foundation's Talk Saves Lives program as well as reviewing the More Than Sad curriculum.

On Wednesday, November 16th, Chamblee Cares will be sponsoring the first Parent University at Chamblee Charter High School with a presentation by Dr. Holly Middleton entitled: "Raising Happy Teenagers". The event will be from 6:30 - 8:00 pm in the Chamblee Charter High School auditorium.

All are welcome. Entrance to the event is free but voluntary donations to Chamblee Cares will be accepted.

NO ZONE is NO for a reason. See for yourself.

When we first started driving we were constantly told by everyone to keep a safe distance between semi-trucks (18 wheelers), but why? Why? Because they will literally hit you.

It is not because they want to, but because of an array of problems such as: having a much larger blind spot, their car taking longer to stop, and the biggest problem- other drivers making incorrect decisions on the road.

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration 2013, more than 4,000 fatal accidents happen between large trucks or busses. While some car drivers are saying that truck drivers are the bullies of the road, but actually 72% of accidents between trucks and passenger vehicles are caused by car drivers.

Variables such as improper following, failure to make a safe lane change, and driving too fast are often causes of fatal crashes between semi-trucks and passenger vehicles.

With that said, here is a video warning us about the dangers of an improper lane change.

So first, we have the truck driver keeping a modest amount of space between him and the blue truck in front of him. Okay, the black Altima switches into the semi-trucks lane. No worries, he kept a good distance. But what happens next…

What? Now this Volks Wagon wants to switch into his lane? No… you can’t. That space in front of him is so he can stop, not for you to merge into. But what does the VW do? Yeah, the driver kept merging, not knowing the truck driver needed that distance.

You can hear the truck driver in the video upset at what the Volkswagen did.This resulted in a collision where the truck driver couldn’t do anything. By the time he saw what the Volkswagen wanted to do, he was already trapped.

What we also have to keep in mind is that just because you signal for a lane change, it does not give the right to change lanes. We change lanes when the time is right and safe to do so.

The only person who could have prevented this was the Volkswagen. In no circumstances should anyone make such a dangerous lane change. If the Volkswagen followed proper rules of driving near a semi-truck, the whole accident could have been avoided.

Luckily, no one was injured! The silver lining of this accident is that we could learn from this drivers mistake. We should never try to change lanes in such a dangerous situation. Never assume that the space in front of semi-truck is for us to change lanes into, that space is the “no zone.”

With what we just saw, we should remember some basic facts about truck drivers.

1. Their blind spots are a lot larger than ours.

2. They cannot make abrupt stops, their stops take a lot more distance and time.

3. Pass trucks quickly, if you cannot then wait patiently until the time is right.

4. Avoid cutting off trucks at all costs.

5. Be a responsible driver!

We hope you found this snippet educational since the purpose of this article is to keep our family and friends safe. If you want to watch the video of the collision you can find it below.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Police take shocking photos of two adults overdosing in car with child in back seat

WCPO Staff

9:55 AM, Sep 9, 2016

5:33 PM, Sep 9, 2016

EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio -- Police in Ohio wanted to send a message Thursday about the heroin epidemic.

And that's exactly what they did. 

The East Livepool Police Department posted two images on the city's Facebook page showing two adults who they say overdosed on heroin in a car with a little boy in the backseat.

"We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug," the post states. "We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess. This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful this story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody."

The photos have since been seen by millions of people and spread across the country. 

According to a police report, an East Liverpool officer spotted an SUV with West Virginia license plates driving erratically Wednesday. The officer saw the driver slam on the brakes when the SUV approached a stopped school bus that was dropping kids off, the police report states. The SUV came to a stop in the middle of the road and the officer approached.

The officer said the driver's head was bobbing and his speech was mostly unintelligible. Police identified the driver as James Acord and the passenger as Rhonda Pasek. Acord told the officer he was taking his front seat passenger, who was passed out, to the hospital, the report states.

The officer said he reached into the vehicle, turned it off and removed the keys just as Acord tried to drive away. The officer then noticed a 4-year-old boy in the backseat. The boy was later identified as Pasek's son.

The officer said Acord soon passed out as well. Emergency crews responded and administered Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of a heroin overdose. Acord and Pasek regained consciousness and were taken to the hospital.

The little boy is in the custody of Columbiana County Children's Services, according to the report. 

Acord is charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children and slowing or stopping in a roadway. Pasek is charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seat belt.

Games are cool, but life is something else.