Be Car Chic

Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile are officially joining AT&T and its ‘It Can Wait’ anti-texting while driving campaign. The leading wireless carriers, among more than 200 other organizations, have joined forces to support a multi-million dollar advertising blitz that aims to curb this bad behavior once and for all. Be Car Chic has supported AT&T’s effort [...]

BY Matthew C. Keegan | Editor, Auto Trends Magazine Are elderly drivers unduly called out for their behind-the-wheel antics? Some may think so, but a recently published university study reveals that there is some truth and much concern about the way some elderly drivers comport themselves while driving. Distracted driving by novice drivers may indicate cell [...]

A friend passed along an article from Australian publication The Age, where transport reporter Adam Carey highlights a recent study on distracted driving and the impacts this behavior has on drivers in Victoria. Upon reading the article, my reaction was “We’re not the only ones dealing with the realities of this issue.” I encourage you [...]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently brought together stakeholders at its first-ever distracted driving symposium. We just wrapped up National Distracted Awareness Month, but the turn of a calendar page doesn’t have to mean you forget the importance of this issue. Check out this quick video I recorded for Rob Richardson of DRIVE SMART Virginia, a [...]

Editor’s note:  As part of our partnership with AT&T on distracted driving, I invited AT&T’s Consumer Education and Safety Director, Andrea Brands, to share more about the ‘It Can Wait’ campaign. This is the first in a series of guest blog posts by AT&T. Enjoy. BY Andrea Brands | Director, Consumer Education and Safety at [...]

The 40th anniversary of the mobile phone and the beginning of Distracted Driver Awareness Month coincided at the start of April. It got Andrew Stoy, digital editor of autoweek.com, thinking about how cars and the mobile phone are changing everything. Originally meant to provide convenience, the combination is proving deadly for some drivers. The following is an elaboration of [...]

Did you know that you’re 23 times more likely to crash your car when texting and driving? Those are pretty high odds for any driver. Now think about a novice driver, who has logged few hours behind the wheel, staring that statistic in the face. In a 2011 survey of 6,000 young drivers over the [...]

In 2011, I began the distracted driving conversation here as part of National Distracted Driving Awareness month. At that time, President Obama had signed an executive order on the matter and 31 states, including D.C. and Guam, had introduced legislation or adopted laws on distracted driving. So what has changed in that time? Today, 39 [...]

Continuing the conversation from our post about whether teens find driving drunk more dangerous than texting while driving, a new infographic from Allstate Insurance shows some stats that may prove the opposite. Texters are three times slower to react than even buzzed drivers Research has shown that drivers who text while behind the wheel are [...]

April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and the blog is back with its Third Annual Distraction Free Fridays campaign. Again, I will ask you, your friends and family to ‘put the device aside and focus on the drive’. Be Car Chic readers and my peers understand just how seriously I take distracted driving.Every Friday for [...]

It’s the second Friday of 2013. By now, many of us have already failed some of our New Year’s resolutions. That’s OK. The way I look at resolutions is that if you make a misstep, tomorrow is a new day to try again. We can’t change our habits overnight. This way of thinking is not [...]

As a teen, I never crashed my car, and I made it well into my twenties before earning my first speeding ticket. Like most teenagers, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to break free from my parents and have a car so I could drive far, far [...]

Editor’s Note:  It is no secret how I feel about distracted driving. My Distraction Free Fridays (DFF) campaign has been ongoing since April 2011, and I believe that speaking up on this issue has helped curb behind-the-wheel behavior among those close to me and (hopefully) beyond my network. I often have friends tell me that [...]

As the holiday weekend kicks off, I’m reminded of how many people will be on the road on their way to visit with family and friends, embracing the final days of summer. Analysts expect this Labor Day weekend to be the busiest for travel since before the economic downturn in 2008. AAA predicts that for [...]

State Farm recently released a new survey of teens between the ages of 14 and 17 that compares more than 650 adolescents’ views on texting while driving versus driving drunk and their perceived likelihood of dying from each behavior. Of the teens surveyed, 57 percent admitted to texting while driving. When asked about the fatal [...]

News has been swirling all week about young mother Shawndeeia Bowen, who was arrested along the Los Angeles corridor for texting while driving with her baby in her lap and two other children unsecured in the back seat. What would normally remain a local story has become nationwide news due to Distracted Driving Awareness Month. [...]

For the second year in a row, April marks ‘National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.’  Originally an issue championed by former Colorado Congresswoman Betsy Markey, due to the death of a young girl in her district, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor this month-long observance in March 2010. Distracted driving is an issue that [...]

Update 3/9/12 6:15 p.m.: Congratulations to our contest winner, Patty from Jim Ellis Buick GMC – Mall of Georgia! Thank you for your thoughtful good driving tip that said: “Make it a hands-free day ya’ll. Take advantage of your vehicle’s voice activated features to make your phone calls. Stay safe on the road – my [...]

Dear friends and readers: Last spring, Carlos Beltran of Beltran About Cars approached me to collaborate on an issue that doesn’t grab a lot of headlines in the automotive enthusiast world – distracted driving. I hadn’t given the issue much thought prior to our conversation, but I knew that the Administration had been looking to issue [...]

Updated 12/3/11 at 7:03 a.m. Earlier this week, I was astonished at the carelessness of one of our own. I couldn’t believe the behavior of a professional who represents the auto industry here in the D.C. area. A friend of mine brought the tweet of Audi’s social media manager, Andy White, to my attention because of [...]