Houston Car Accident Lawyer: Texas Governor's Veto on Texting While Driving is ...

Houston, TX (PRWEB) June 24, 2011

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent veto of a bill that would ban texting while driving will put thousands of lives in jeopardy, Houston personal injury attorney Brad T. Wyly said today.

Gov. Perry said the proposal, which would have prohibited drivers from sending or reading text messages while behind the wheel, was too broad and called it a “government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults,” according to the Houston Chronicle .

Not so, said Wyly, who represents victims of serious motor vehicle accidents in Houston, Harris County, Galveston, Beaumont and the surrounding areas.

“This isn’t about Big Brother attempting to rule Texas drivers with an iron fist,” the Houston car accident lawyer said. “This is about preventing countless injuries and deaths on the roads. Cell phones have become a routine part of life nowadays, but they are unfortunately closely linked with incidents of distracted driving.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation breaks down distracted driving into three levels:     Visual, in which a driver takes his eyes off the road.     Manual, in which the driver’s hands are off the steering wheel.     Cognitive, when the driver’s mind is focused on something other than the road.

Texting is the most reckless form of distracted driving because it incorporates all three levels, the USDOT says.

“That’s absolutely right,” agreed Wyly, whose Houston personal injury law firm, Wyly Law Firm, P.C., handles cases involving car, motorcycle and truck accidents and Texas wrongful death lawsuits . “When all of those mental functions are engaged, there is no way a driver who is texting can be safe. Multitasking and driving do not go together.”

In 2009, there were 3,310 Texas vehicle crashes caused by cell phone usage, according to the state Department of Transportation. Nationally, 5,474 Americans were killed and an estimated 448,000 were injured in accidents where distracted driving was the main cause, data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration shows.    

“That’s why a veto on texting while driving makes no sense,” Wyly said. “It’s true that there’s a balance that needs to be struck between personal freedoms and public safety, but in this case, it’s not just the texting driver whose life is at stake. Every single person around him or her is at risk from this type of negligence.

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Motor vehicle accidents can cause life altering and catastrophic injuries. Treatment and rehabilitation can be a long and painful process and in some instances the victim will have lifelong disabilities. Fortunately there are many caring and talented individuals and medical teams dedicated to helping victims recover as fully as possible.

The Houston Herald recently shared a story about a 19-year-old man that was treated at the Ozarks Medical Center Rehabilitation Services and returned to thank the speech therapy team that helped him recover from the injuries he sustained in a serious car accident in which he was ejected from the vehicle as it rolled over.

The man was just 16-years-old when he crossed the center line in his vehicle to avoid a deer that he had spotted along the roadway. He lost control of his vehicle after overcorrecting and the vehicle rolled three times.

He spent two weeks in a coma induced by medication. He had fractured his ribs and skull, fractured his hip and pelvis, perforated his liver and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. His recovery has been very long and painful, with a month spent in the hospital and another 17 days spent in a rehabilitation facility before finally being allowed to go home.

The teen began working with Speech Language Pathologists in March 2009. He started by working on issues like memory and recall. He also suffered from speech apraxia, a condition where a person has trouble expressing their thoughts correctly.

The pathologists gave the boy strategies to work on his speech at home, and he practiced them. His hard work paid off and the teen was able to return for his senior year in high school. He is now working on a college degree in biology.

The visit coincided with National Hearing and Speech Month.

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