Be Car Chic

Editor’s note:  For the third year in a row, I have had the pleasure of interviewing NHTSA Administrator David Strickland following National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. This has become my favorite exclusive interview to conduct. This time, the Administrator and I chatted about how the distracted driving landscape has transformed in four years. Changing driver [...]

Parents of teenagers have plenty to focus on. There are so many conversations that have to be had at that age – under-age drinking and texting and driving are just two of them. A 2012 State Farm and Harris Interactive survey of 650 teens compared their views on texting while driving versus driving drunk and [...]

BY Liza Smith, Automotive Ads Contributor | @Homadge The distracted driving print ads campaign below comes from Brazil for Fiat Linea. While the second cow ad is a little humorous, the tree, truck and cement wall are all too real. Credits: Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett Brazil Creative Director: Ruy Lindenberg Art Director: Alessandro Bernardo Copywriter: João Caetano Brasil [...]

Following the announcement that Cellcontrol and Esurance will provide teenagers a benefit for taking action to drive distraction-free, I wanted to know more about the technology behind the solution. The companies are teaming up to give teenage driving policy holders a free Cellcontrol unit free of charge. I caught up with Cellcontrol CEO, Robert Guba, [...]

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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood released his ‘Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving’ last week, announcing $2.4 million in funds for pilot projects in California and Delaware. What the blueprint lays out for drivers, states, and OEMs Secretary LaHood hopes that this blueprint will move the remaining 11 states to take action. Nearly every state has [...]

Social networking has become interwoven in our lives. We share our personal and work experiences through Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis. Nothing seems to be too small or too big to share with friends and colleagues. And the tweets don’t stop once we step away from our computers. We have a smartphone to [...]

Nearly one year following our first exclusive interview with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) David Strickland, Be Car Chic again discussed the state of distracted driving with the agency’s Administrator. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and NHTSA Administrator David Strickland are continuing their fight against distracted driving. The duo has been on [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced the first of three phases of guidelines that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will provide to automobile manufacturers. A first for the agency, the call for automakers to limit in-car distractions comes just days after President Obama announced his FY 2013 budget, one that included $330 million [...]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent federal agency responsible for investigating and determining the cause of transportation accidents across the country, released this week its recommendation to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) to “ban the nonemergency use of all portable electronic devices for all drivers in the United States.” The [...]