St. Pete Beach

How To Handle A Traffic Ticket In St. Pete Beach Florida

St. Pete Beach is a small town with only 2.2 square miles of land area and less than 10,000 permanent residents but, for a small town, it has some major traffic problems. With thousands of tourists flocking to St. Pete Beach every year and only one major road in and out, the town experiences traffic incidents out of proportion to its small size and population. Continue Reading

Traffic deaths declined

Traffic Deaths Declined To New Lows In 2013

Traffic deaths declined in 2013 by 3.1 percent over the previous year according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). The 32,719 highway deaths in 2013 represents the lowest number of highway deaths since recording began in 1975. Traffic injuries also declined by 2.1 percent. Continue Reading

Waze app

Waze App Cuts Commute Times; Endangers Communities

The Waze app is proving to be popular among commuters for shortening commute times but it’s proving to be extremely unpopular among residents who live in neighborhoods through which the commuter traffic is routed. Continue Reading

cellphone app

Cellphone App Warns If You’ve Had Too Much To Drink

A new cellphone app produced by the State of Maryland aims to warn you if you’ve had too much to drink. Called ENDUI, as in End DUI, the app was developed under a federal grant in hopes of keeping drunk drivers off the road.

To use the app, the user informs the app of their height, weight, sex, and how many drinks they’ve consumed. Using that information, the app determines their approximate Blood Alcohol Content (BAC). The app can also provide phone numbers for local cab services or designated driver numbers that are pre-programmed by the user.

The app also has games, one of which is a reaction time tester. To test their reaction time, the user must “hit the brakes” each time a pedestrian walks into the path of the car. The game then determines how fast the user reacted and if the user was able to stop in time to avoid hitting the pedestrian.

This app can be helpful but shouldn’t be relied upon for accurate BAC information. For one thing, “one drink” may be hard to determine. Some cocktails, such as Long Island Iced Teas for example, may have three to four shots and contain the alcohol equivalent of up to four drinks. If the user counts that as one drink, the app will be getting bum information.

No one’s metabolic rate is the same and, even though the app can approximate a BAC level based on height, weight, sex, and number of drinks, the only accurate way to measure a person’s BAC is with a breathalyzer. However, it’s better than nothing and serves as a good reminder that someone who has been drinking should take a cab or call a designated driver.

The best thing for anyone who plans to drink anything at all is to have a plan to get home by some other means than by driving their own car. Even one drink can affect your driving abilities. Remember, buzzed driving is impaired driving.

The app is available now on iOS or Android.

Read more: A Cell Phone App to Curb DUIs? States Get Creative to Reduce Drunken Driving

Worst drivers by state

Which States Have The Worst Drivers?

The worst drivers by state list has been updated by the folks at Car Insurance Comparison.com. No matter how safe a driver you may be, you’re still at risk of having a crash if the other drivers in your state drive badly and, unfortunately, the price you pay for insurance is determined by that driving environment. The worse the driving situation, the more your insurance will cost.

How worst drivers score was determined

To determine each state’s rating, the surveyors looked at the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the following categories:

  • Fatalities Rate per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled
  • Failure to Obey (Percentage of Fatal Crashes that involved Traffic Signals, Not Wearing Seat Belts, and Driving with an Invalid Driver License)
  • Drunk Driving (Percentage of Fatal Crashes that Involved Alcohol)
  • Speeding (Percentage of Driving Fatalities that were Speed-Related)
  • Careless Driving (Pedestrian & Bicyclist Fatalities per 100,000 Population)

The data was tabulated into one single score per state with the worst states receiving the lowest score.

To see where your state ranked and which states scored worst, read: Worst Drivers By State