The U.S. Department of Transportation this morning kicked off its two-day summit on distracted driving, reporting that 6,000 people died last year in traffic accidents caused by distracted drivers.

The summit was called by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who wants traffic…

I was reminded yet again today of the dangers of texting and driving. After lunch, I was pulling away from the curb when a woman zipped past me, eyes glued to the screen of her cell phone, upon which she…

The push to do something about all that cell-phone texting and chatting by drivers gained some momentum today when Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he’ll convene a panel of experts to look at the issue.

LaHood said he intends to gather…

Cell phones in cars was such a fun topic yesterday, why not stick with it?

Today, the Governors Highway Safety Association jumped into the fray with its own take on cell phones and that Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study that found…

More news on the cell phone/driving front. And it’s not good for those of you out there who continue to insist that using a cell phone has no impact on your ability to drive effectively.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute today…

Life & Tech, we call this blog. I’m supposed to write about the ways technology intersects with life.

Well, there I was Saturday at BestBuy, colliding with technology. My wife and I had decided to get a satellite radio for Christmas.…

This is one that seems to be popping up more and more these days. The touch screen.

Of course they’ve been around a while. And the Apple iPhone has certainly done a lot to make them more popular. The new Blackberry…

I meant to get to this last week, but other things kept coming up. The folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project have updated their series of studies about the future of the Internet.

Basically, they surveyed hundreds of Internet…

I just completed an interesting experiment today. I went down to Cape Girardeau to help cover the Sarah Palin rally early this morning. Instead of a notebook, I carried one of the paper’s fancy new Nokia N95 camera phones. It…

So my wife and I are driving around in Illinois last weekend, heading over to a friend’s farm - and testing out the GPS/navigation on the Blackberry Curve I got last week.

At one point, she asks, “Will it tell us…