Before you watch this be warned it’s pretty graphic. I’ve seen plenty of people swerving because of texting – one guy I saw was on his old, ratty Nokia rolling from lane to lane as he texted whoever was most important in his life while traveling 75MPH on I75 in Ohio – and this PSA really shows what can, and probably will happen, in a terrible number of texting-while-driving cases.
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Reuters is reporting that text messaging may have had something to do with a recent train crash in California that killed 25 and injured 135. Cell phone records show that the train’s conductor received a text message at 4:21:03 PM, followed by the crash at 4:22:23 PM. The idea is that he got the text message, looked down to read it, and missed the trackside signal. The commuter train then collided with a freight train.

Whether text messaging was the culprit or not, California train workers have now been temporarily banned from using cell phones at work. Temporarily? It’s a train, make it permanent. Many states make it illegal to text while driving, why should a train be any different? You don’t see bus drivers texting (I hope).

A report recently came out that says parents and teachers are not communicating. Parents blame their busy schedules for not being able to meet with teachers.The report also said that parents know more about their bank accounts then they do about their kid’s report card.

The reason for this is simple. The information about your bank account is readily available online and via text messaging. Parents are now demanding the same level of service for monitoring their child’s progress in school. Teachers could text or email updates to parents once a month or have a site they can post updates too.

I’m sure students find the idea of an RSS feed of their quiz results just thrilling!

A small airplane in Ireland suddenly found itself in a dilly of a pickle of a jam when it "lost all onboard electrical power, communications and weather radar soon after take-off from Kerry airport," according to The Irish Times.

The twin-engine Piper contained a pilot and four passengers. The pilot was unable to make contact with the nearest air traffic control tower, so he tried his cell phone. He was able to contact the air traffic control tower in nearby Cork, but he eventually lost contact.

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Because looking both ways before crossing the street is harder than following laws, Illinois has introduced a bill that would ban texting in intersections.

Ken Dunkin, the representative who introduced the bill, says texting in the street is no laughing matter:

“This legislation is not laughable. On the surface it’s like, ‘Oh wow, what is this?’ But it’s becoming more and more of a common problem with people haplessly crossing an intersection and almost killing themselves.”

He also sited two pedestrian deaths in New York city that might have been related to texting-while-walking. If New York wants to pick up the bill I hope they also ban staring-up-at-tall-buildings-while-walking and stopping-at-the-top-of-the-subway-stairs-to-look-around.

And in case you still wanted to laugh at the thought of the dangers of walking, I mean texting, the American College of Emergency Physicians issued a warning this week about the how its possible to hurt yourself when you’re not paying attention to where you are walking. And an ER doctor in Texas reported that she’s treated people who injured themselves texting while riding Segways. Oh wow, Segways!

photo care of GeekSugar

Twenty-year-old Nathan Schwartz of Clyde, Ohio took home the $50,000 prize in LG’s National Texting Championship – the down and dirty battle on the QWERTY. 

Schwartz was able to accurately tap out a ridiculously long phrase in 60 seconds.  

According to LG, the winning phrase was:

"Does everybody here know the alphabet? Let’s text. Here it goes … AbcDeFghiJKlmNoPQrStuvWXy & Z! Now I know my A-B-C’s, next time won’t you text with me?"

Not to take anything away from Schwarz — that phrase is definitely impressive — but the contest was only open to people with activated, full QWERTY phones made by LG.

via I4U

Someone sent out thousands of text messages encouraging recipients to call Mr. G. Raff and a number of other animals at the Houston Zoo. The message includes the number to the Zoo’s main switchboard. No one knows who set up the prank, but the giraffe is already set up on two dates with nice ladies from the Houston area and could be mating shortly.

UPDATE – More information straight from the emu’s mouth. The Houston Zoo just emailed us:

Actually, if you picked up the story from Dial-a-Phone they didn’t get it quite right. It was Dublin Zoo that received calls related to hoax text messages that told recipients G. Raff or Anna Conda wanted to talk to them. At Houston Zoo our text messages were all variations of the “Somebody’s looking for you” theme. Go to www.chron.com to see the Houston Chronicle’s story about our hoax text message experience.

Further proving my hypothesis that Mr. Bean is not a character but just an average self-absorbed Brit, Brick Lane authorities have found themselves forced to try out padding the city’s lampposts because idiots keep walking into them whilst texting.

I say let them bonk their heads. It’s the only way they’re going to learn.

Padding to protect pedestrians [Yahoo! News]

I was spoiled. The first phone that I had when this whole “texting” (as the kids call it) craze hit was a T-Mobile Sidekick, which included unlimited SMS messages with the data plan. Then somewhere along the lines, I fell off the wagon and switched to Sprint in order to get my hands on a Treo 650. Imagine my surprise when I got my first bill and found out I’d all of a sudden been paying some ungodly amount for each text message I’d sent and received.

So how much do you actually end up paying nowadays? Depending on your carrier, you could be paying something along the lines of $1497.97 per megabyte and the person on the other end has to pay the same amount to receive one megabyte (assuming 20 cents to send, 20 cents to receive). Hit the jump for more hard data.

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It’s officially official: texting while driving will get you a ticket.

Back when I was a kid, this wasn’t a crime, this was a hobby.

Right? Right?

Phoenix hands out its first citation for texting while driving [AZ Central]

Texting while driving is a sure fire way to get a ticket or get in an accident. Just being back in California this last week makes me wonder why and how I ever used my phone while driving. It’s ridiculously stupid and unsafe, but I still do it. Heh. But things may change thanks to some fancy speech solutions from Nuance. Oh, yeah, DWT means driving while texting. Watch the video and see how easy it is to use.

Nuance

Apparently a couple of days ago at CTIA, former president Bill Clinton sent his first text message to his wife Hillary. ZDNet’s Russell Shaw says, "Another example of how most politicians are clueless about tech. Bill Clinton’s first tech message? This is October 2007?"

Maybe, but the idea of a politician pecking away at a cell phone is kind of a silly visual to me. Anyone else? That’s what BlackBerry-toting assistants are for. You would think, though, that of the somewhat-older generation of politicians, Bill would be the one with the unlimited texting plan so that he could [insert requisite adultery joke here].

Bill Clinton loses his SMS virginity for Hillary’s 60th [ZDNet.com]

A recently leaked support document reveals that the Zune 2 will include an inbox where Zune Socialites can send and receive messages amongst each other, but that doesn’t necessarily entail text messages in the way we’re used to. In fact, this is all just a crock of poopoo. If you look closely at this particular slide you’ll notice that it never mentions ‘text messages’ anywhere. It does say ‘text from the message’ and that’s how it should be interpreted. There’s no secret message and I have no idea who the hell thought it meant text messaging.

Zune Socialites will be sending their friends messages through the Social and by what other method should receivers interpret a message? Is it subliminal or do all Zune owners have ESP. Learn to read before you go throwing around rumors about something so obvious. What a waste of time.

ZuneBoards [via Zune Scene via Giz]