• Why aren't there more storm shelters in Oklahoma?

    MSNBC's Chris Jansing tours a safe room that saved an Oklahoma couple and their neighbors. Jansing also talks to Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb about safe houses.

    By Mark Schone and Nidhi Subbaraman, NBC News

    The earth itself was at least partially to blame for why desperate schoolchildren in Moore, Okla., had nowhere to hide from Monday’s devastating tornado.


    Much of the soil in Oklahoma, including Moore, is red clay -- a porous substance that makes foundations settle and basements and underground tornado shelters leak. “That’s the reason we don’t have basements,” said Tom Bennett of Tulsa, past president of the National Storm Shelter Association. In greater Oklahoma City, which includes Moore, only 3.5 percent of homes have basements, according to Reuters.

    But it wasn’t just the ground under residents’ feet that was to blame. The region’s politics and economy also were factors.

    “This is a red state,” said state Rep. Richard Morrissette, D-Oklahoma City, who has introduced several unsuccessful bills in the state Legislature to require so-called “safe rooms,” shelters or anti-tornado construction in homes and trailer parks. “People don’t like anything that is mandated. They don’t like it when the government says they have to do something.”

    That makes Oklahoma similar to other states in Tornado Alley. “I am unaware of any jurisdiction that requires safe rooms in private homes,” said Corey Schultz, a Kansas architect who specializes in building safe rooms for schools. And only one state – Alabama – requires them in schools, he said.

    Though the mayor of Moore said Wednesday he now wants the city to require shelters in private homes, Oklahoma, like other states prone to tornadoes, prefers to encourage the construction of shelters. The state has emphasized using federal funds to underwrite the optional construction of specially reinforced, above-ground “safe rooms” inside private homes rather than community tornado shelters.

    Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

    Tannen Maury / EPA

    A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead.

    Launch slideshow

    But building a steel room on a concrete slab adds thousands to the price of a new home in a market where a typical property is worth $108,000. And for homeowners, spending $2,500 and up to add tornado protection to existing homes often isn’t feasible without assistance in a state where the median income is $44,000 -- $8,000 below the national figure.

    That’s a tough sell, even though it could mean the difference between life and death, said Bennett, the former president of the storm shelter association.

    “In-residence’ safe rooms’ are the way to go,” he said. The rooms are built to withstand EF 5 tornadoes, with winds of 250 mph – in excess of the 210 mph recorded in Moore. “But half the population can’t afford it or doesn’t have a place to put it because they live in apartments.”

    FEMA, which has programs to offset the costs, estimates it costs between $6,600 and $8,700 for a steel-reinforced 8-by-8-foot room, and much more for a larger space.

    In 2012, the state launched a new program to make construction of the rooms less costly. SoonerSafe pays homeowners 75 percent of the cost of building a safe room, up to $2,000. But again, the money is federal, pulled from the state’s unused FEMA funds, and winners are chosen via lottery. In 2012, 16,000 homeowners applied, and 500 “won” the reimbursements via random drawing.

    “Oklahoma’s SoonerSafe Safe Room Rebate Program is a model for supporting the construction of safe rooms through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Grants,” said FEMA spokesman Dan Watson.

    Localities can also apply for another pool of federal money, as the City of Moore was attempting to do. Moore wanted $2 million in rebates for 800 homeowners to build safe rooms, and had submitted an emergency plan to the state and FEMA as part of the application process. But according to the city’s website, changes in federal regulations created a “moving target” and delayed the program.

    FEMA’s Watson said that in the past 20 years, “FEMA has invested more than $57 million in 11,768 private and public safe rooms in Oklahoma, more structures than any other state. Many were in the same area as yesterday’s tornado.”

    “The State of Oklahoma has been a great partner in providing innovative mitigation solutions to residents,” he added.

    Despite the construction and subsidies, Bennett estimated that less than a fifth of the state’s 4 million residents have access to meaningful private shelter from tornadoes. In Moore, according to the New York Times, only about 10 percent of homes have them.

    TODAY's Matt Lauer speaks with the firefighters and police officers who are searching through what's left of Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., after it was hit by a tornado on Monday afternoon, resulting in the deaths of seven children.

    Schultz, the Kansas architect, said Oklahoma schools are not required to have storm shelters, but can apply for federal funding to build them. Albert Ashwood, who heads the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said at a press conference Tuesday that safe rooms at more than 100 schools had been funded via FEMA, but that the two schools hit in Oklahoma, Briarwood Elementary and Plaza Towers Elementary, were not among them. There are more than 1,800 public schools in Oklahoma.

    “You have limited funds that are based on disasters you’ve had in the past,” he said. “When you have limited funds, you set priorities on what schools you want to ask for.”

    He also said that his department was trying to determine how many schools in the state had safe rooms.

    The preference for safe rooms in private residences rather than public structures is only partly about political philosophy. It’s also based on a safety calculation. Using your own shelter or a neighbor’s shelter can be faster than trying to reach a central location.

    “I don’t think it’s a good idea to drive across town when there’s a tornado,” said Bennett. “That’s where community shelters fall short.”

    On the City of Moore’s website, an Emergency Management notice explains that Moore has no community shelter because there is no building suitable for one, and because “overall, people face less risk by taking shelter in a reasonably well-constructed residence!”

    Next door in Kansas, however, Schultz says an equally beet-red state seems to have decided to steer its disaster money to creating more public shelters. Schultz says that his state, like Oklahoma, depends on FEMA funding for tornado shelters, but has focused on adding safe rooms to schools. In 1999, tornadoes hit schools in Wichita, and though no one was killed, “that opened eyes.”

    “When we send our kids to school there are two things we take for granted,” said Schultz. “One is that they’re learning something. The other is that they’ll come home safe. “

    “The Enterprise tornado and now this tornado show us that’s not always the case. I truly believe in shelters in schools for that reason.”

    Bennett said that he is now receiving the same kind of back-channel signals that he got after the 2007 tornado in Enterprise, Ala., where a tornado killed seven at the local high school. That led Alabama to require schools to include safe rooms or to close during tornado watches. “Oklahoma may be headed in the direction of Alabama,” he said.

    On Wednesday, Moore mayor Glenn Lewis said he would propose a new ordinance requiring shelters in newly constructed single and multi-family homes. "We'll try to get it passed as soon as I can," he told CNN.

    And Chris Shatswell, an Oklahoma native who now lives in Fort Worth, Texas, has created an online petition via Change.org to get storm shelters in Oklahoma schools.

    So while Morrissette, the Oklahoma legislator, worries that the current attention to increasing the supply of shelters may be short-lived, Bennett is more optimistic. “This has a shelf-life. The story of the kids in Moore has an impact,” he said.

    Mark Schone is an investigative editor for NBC News; Nidhi Subbaraman is a contributing technology and science writer for NBC News; Alan Boyle, NBC News Digital science editor, also contributed to this report.

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  • 'Travesty of justice': State quietly dropped violations and fine in workplace death

    L.V. Hall via Center for Public Intergrity

    Tina Hall and her husband, L.V., in 2005. Tina Hall was fatally burned in a workplace accident in Franklin, Ky., two years later. Courtesy of L.V. Hall

    By Jim Morris, Center for Public Integrity

    Around midnight on June 1, 2007, Tina Hall was finishing her shift in a place she loathed: the mixing room at the Toyo Automotive Parts factory in Franklin, Ky., where flammable chemicals were kept in open containers.

    A spark ignited vapors given off by toluene, a solvent Hall was transferring from a 55-gallon drum to a hard plastic bin. A flash fire engulfed the 39-year-old team leader, causing third-degree burns over 90 percent of her body. She died 11 days later.

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    After investigating the accident, the Kentucky Labor Cabinet’s Department of Workplace Standards cited Toyo for 16 “serious” violations and proposed a $105,500 fine in November 2007.

    “You’re disappointed because you think, that’s all they got fined?” Hall’s sister, Amy Harville, of Moulton, Ala., said in a telephone interview. “But then I thought, at least they got 16 violations. I was thinking they’d stick, as severely as she was burned.”

    The violations didn’t stick. Every one of them went away in 2008, as did the fine, after Toyo’s lawyer vowed to contest the enforcement action in court. Last month, in a move believed to be unprecedented in Kentucky, the Department of Workplace Standards reinstated all the violations because, it said, the company hadn’t made promised safety improvements.

     

     

    The case was another black eye for state-run workplace health and safety programs nationwide. In all, 26 states administer their own programs under federal supervision. Several have been criticized in recent years for capitulating to lawyered-up employers, performing subpar inspections and shutting out accident victims’ families.

    Officials in Kentucky didn’t tell Harville and Hall’s husband that the Toyo violations had been dismissed. They found out in 2010 only because Ron Hayes, a fellow Alabamian who runs a nonprofit advocacy group for families of fallen workers, had taken an interest in the case and checked in regularly with the Department of Workplace Standards.

    Hayes — whose son, Pat, died in a Florida grain elevator accident in 1993 — lodged a formal complaint against Kentucky with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which concluded in June 2011 that the state had erred.

    “Deleting citations in their entirety sends a signal to employers that they need only contest to alleviate the burden of history,” OSHA’s regional administrator in Atlanta, Cindy Coe, wrote to Hayes.

    In a written statement, Kentucky’s Department of Workplace Standards said it dismissed the violations after determining that “the case would not have withstood legal challenge.” Instead, the department and Toyo entered into a settlement agreement, which provided for follow-up inspections. Toyo’s alleged failure to meet the terms of that agreement led to the reinstatement of the violations last month.

    The reinstatement showed that the violations never should have been dropped in the first place, Hayes said. “It’s vindication, because we said all along this was wrong,” he said.

    The president of Toyo Automotive Parts did not return calls seeking comment. In a 2008 legal filing, Toyo denied responsibility for Tina Hall’s death, calling the accident “the result of unforeseeable, isolated acts undertaken by an individual employee.”

    Problems in the states
    Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, states that choose to regulate workplace health and safety must ensure that their programs are “at least as effective” as the federal one. OSHA pays up to half the cost of such programs and is supposed to keep tabs on them.

    By some accounts, it hasn’t done a particularly good job. After press reports about a rash of construction worker deaths in Las Vegas, OSHA reviewed the Nevada program in 2009 and found a long list of flaws. Among them: State inspectors weren’t sufficiently trained to identify construction hazards and were discouraged by managers from issuing “willful” violations — which suggest an employer showed “plain indifference to the law” and can lead to stiff penalties — to avoid protracted court battles.

    OSHA looked at the programs in the 25 other states that administer their own, finding deficiencies such as uncollected penalties in North Carolina and misclassified violations in South Carolina. Kentucky, OSHA found, was taking too long to issue citations and wasn’t making complainants aware of “specific official findings.”

    In 2011, the Labor Department’s inspector general reported that OSHA hadn’t found a suitable way to measure the effectiveness of state programs. In his response to the IG, OSHA chief David Michaels wrote that the agency was developing a new monitoring system that would involve, among other things, reviews of state enforcement case files.

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    Still, Hayes believes that “systemic problems” persist. “Oversight from federal OSHA has been lacking for the past 42 years,” he said. “There are so many different problems from state to state.”

    Indeed, Hawaii’s program — described as “poor” in a 2010 OSHA report — has been severely hampered by budget and staffing cuts for the past three years. Things got so bad that state officials recently asked the federal government for help.

    ‘The Five Commitments’ 
    In its 2007 annual report, Toyo Tire & Rubber Co., a Japanese conglomerate that makes tires, auto parts and chemicals in plants around the world, lists what it calls “The Five Commitments.”

    “We make safety our highest priority in the provision of products and services,” reads Commitment No. 2.

    Tina Hall thought otherwise, according to her husband. At the time of the accident in June 2007, she was trying to transfer out of the Franklin plant’s adhesive department because the job required her to spend time in the mixing room, where toxic and flammable chemicals were stored.

    “She talked about how bad the fumes were in that room,” said L.V. Hall, who lives in Bremen, Ala. “She said something about the disposal of chemicals — they weren’t doing it right. I’d been wanting her to get out of that mess.”

    Tina Hall and other team leaders would go into the mixing room to fill plastic bins, known as totes, with solvents such as toluene. They’d clean gummed-up machine fixtures in the totes. Team leaders also would fill five-gallon buckets with solvents and carry them to adhesive machines on the factory floor. The solvents were used to take residue off the machines.

    Kentucky’s Department of Workplace Standards would later cite Toyo for obstructing exit routes in the mixing room, not keeping flammable liquids in covered containers when they weren’t being used, failing to control vapors and having inadequate fire-protection equipment.

    On the night of the accident, Tina Hall was cleaning fixtures by herself when a spark, likely caused by static electricity, ignited toluene vapors and set off an explosion in a 55-gallon drum of methyl isobutyl ketone, another solvent.

    Then a General Motors assembly line worker, L.V. Hall was awakened at home in Auburn, Ky., by a call from a Toyo team leader around midnight. His wife, on fire, had managed to get outside and roll on the ground. “How she got outside I don’t know,” Hall said. “It was like an obstacle course to find the exit door.”

    Tina Hall was taken to a local hospital, then to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, about 45 minutes away. L.V. had a brief talk with her before the doctors put her into a coma to shield her from the pain. “She said, ‘I did everything the way I was supposed to do it,’” Hall said. His wife drifted off and never regained consciousness. She died on June 12, 2007.

    'Travesty of justice'
    Not long afterward Tina Hall’s younger sister, Amy Harville, was directed to Ron Hayes by an acquaintance. Burly, white-bearded and tenacious, Hayes lives in Fairhope, Ala., and runs the FIGHT Project, which helps families navigate the bureaucracy of workplace fatality investigations. Hayes counseled Harville and L.V. Hall as the state’s inquiry into the Toyo accident progressed.

    When the Department of Workplace Standards issued 16 serious violations against the company in November 2007, “I was OK with it,” L.V. Hall said. “I didn’t realize that once that’s done, these attorneys can get in there and just do away with it.”

    Documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity under the Freedom of Information Act show how Toyo’s lawyer, Mark Dreux of Arent Fox in Washington, D.C., fought the state of Kentucky from the beginning. Dreux declined to comment on the case.

    In March 2008, the state offered to reduce the penalty from $105,500 to $74,000. Dreux refused. In June 2008, the state proposed a further reduction, to $15,000, for three violations. Dreux said no. In November 2008, Dreux got what he wanted: No violations and no fine.

    It was Hayes who first learned, in July 2010, that all the violations had been deleted. He alerted Harville.

    “I was devastated,” she said. “It takes you back all over again, like Tina was killed for the second time.”

    She called L.V. Hall, who reacted similarly. “I was just shaking I was so upset,” he said. He called the Department of Workplace Standards and finally reached “the lady attorney who was over the case. I basically told her, ‘I cannot believe y’all dropped every one of those citations.’ She said, ‘Well, Mr. Hall, I am an attorney and there was not enough evidence.’”

    Hayes knew what to do. He filed a CASPA — Complaint About State Program Administration — with OSHA’s Atlanta regional office, calling Kentucky’s dismissal of the citations a “travesty of justice.”

    After an investigation, Regional Administrator Cindy Coe, in essence, agreed, writing in June of last year that “the violations were well documented and legally sufficient and there was no definitive evidence in the file that indicated that they could not be supported.” Deleting all the citations, Coe wrote, erases an employer’s safety history and deprives regulators of critical information should subsequent enforcement actions commence.

    “It also signals to compliance staff that their efforts are for no good end, if the point is to drop everything at the threat of going to court,” the administrator wrote. “It further signals to employees in the workplace that there is no entity on their side.”

    In his response to Coe, the commissioner of the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, Michael Dixon, wrote that the state “does not retreat from litigation” but didn’t believe it could defend the case before the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an appeal body.

    In May, a state inspector returned to the Toyo plant in Franklin to see if the company had done all the things it said it would do after Tina Hall’s death — making sure supervisors were trained in the correct way to clean fixtures, for example. It hadn’t.

    In a July 5 letter, Susan Draper, then director of the Kentucky Labor Cabinet’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health Compliance, notified Ronald Wyans, president of Toyo Automotive Parts (USA), that the 16 original citations had been reinstated, as had the proposed $105,500 penalty. The Tina Hall case had come full circle.

    Sometime in the next few weeks, Amy Harville, L.V. Hall and Hall’s lawyers expect to meet with Dixon and Toyo counsel. They expect to learn whether Toyo intends to accept its punishment or continue fighting.

    “When somebody gets killed in one of these workplaces, it shouldn’t be this way,” L.V. Hall said. “I had Ron Hayes on my side and he knew what to do. Most people don’t have Ron. These citations never would have been brought back without him.”

    The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet.

  • Motorcyclist killed on way to memorial for another biker who died in crash

    By Pei-Sze Cheng, NBCNewYork.com

    A motorcyclist was struck and killed by a fire truck in Brooklyn, New York, while he was on his way to a memorial for another biker killed in a crash one year ago.


    The motorcyclist, 46-year-old Reginald Brown of Brooklyn, was driving westbound on Monroe Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant when he collided with an FDNY fire truck at Marcy Avenue at about 4 p.m., officials said. He was a block away from his home.

    Witness Danae Grandison said Brown's body "flew off the motorcycle," and he landed in front of a beauty salon. He was wearing a helmet. 

    Read the full story at NBCNewYork.com

    The fire truck from Ladder Company 111 was responding to a fire at 315 Nostrand Ave., caused when a 17-year-old boy set off illegal fireworks, officials said. The truck had its lights and sirens on.

    Brown was taken to Woodhull Hospital where he died, officials said.

    Tiesha Safford said she was "confused" by how her cousin, who was a careful motorcyclist, could have been struck.

    "He rides his bike pretty slow so I don't know how he wasn't able to hear them," said Brown's cousin Tiesha Safford. "I don't understand." 

    Friends told NBC 4 New York Brown was going to a memorial for a friend who died in a motorcycle crash one year ago on Utica Avenue and Avenue D in Brooklyn. 

    "He said he was going to change his clothes, and we were going to link up to go to the memorial for a friend of ours," said friend Sidest Mahadi. 

    Brown was a stickler for rules, said Mahadi.

    The teen accused of using the illegal fireworks was later arrested, FDNY officials said.

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  • More Americans died in workplace in '09 than during entire Iraq war

    On Sept. 3, 2009, contract laborer Nick Revetta was killed in an explosion at U.S. Steel's Clairton Plant near Pittsburgh. Revetta's death and the events that followed reveal the limitations of a federal law meant to protect American workers.

    By msnbc.com

    When Nicholas Adrian Revetta of suburban Pittsburgh died in an explosion at a U.S. Steel plant on Sept. 3, 2009, his death did not make national headlines. No hearings were held into the accident that killed him. No one was fired or sent to jail.           

    The 32-year-old contract laborer, who left behind a wife and two young children, was one of the 4,551 people killed on the job in America in 2009 -- a number that eclipsed the total number of U.S. fatalities in the nine-year Iraq war. Combined with the estimated 50,000 people who die annually of work-related diseases, it's as if a fully loaded Boeing 737-700 crashed every day.

    The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 entitles American workers to "safe and healthful" conditions in their workplaces. But an examination of Revetta's death by the Center for Public Integrity illustrates how safety can yield to speed, how even fatal accidents can have few consequences for employers -- who are typically fined just $7,900 per fatality -- and how federal investigations can be cut short by what some call a de facto quota system.  

     

    Click here to read the rest of the story.

     

  • US traffic deaths at lowest level since 1949

    By Paul A. Eisenstein, The Detroit Bureau

    U.S. traffic fatalities continue to plunge, reaching their lowest level since 1949, well before the creation of the American interstate highway system.

    According to estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 32,310 people died in traffic accidents in 2011, a 1.7% year-over-year decline. That marks the seventh consecutive year that the death rate has declined.

    Since just 2005, traffic fatalities have fallen by more than 25% — and when measured in terms of deaths per mile driven the figure has reached its lowest level since record-keeping began in 1921, according to NHTSA. 

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    While federal officials declined to point to specific factors, experts suggest there are several reasons behind the sharp drop.  These include a crackdown on drunk driving – which some once linked to as many as half of all highway deaths – increased use of seatbelts and improved vehicle design complying with stricter federal safety requirements.  In just the last several years, NHTSA has mandated the installation of electronic stability control systems on all new vehicles, along with tougher roof crush standards.

    But some experts also point to the economic downturn which has been credited – or blamed – for a sharp drop in the number of miles the average American has been driving in recent years.  The preliminary NHTSA study shows U.S. motorists collectively drove 35.7 billion vehicle miles fewer in 2011 than the year before – a 1.2% decline.  As the economy recovers, some observers warn, fatalities could rise as people again drive more. 

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    But even when adjusted to an apples-to-apples, the death rate is down, reaching a low of 1.09 for every 100 million miles driven compared to 1.11 deaths in 2010.  At its peak, that was closer to 7 per 100 million vehicle miles.

    As recently as 2005, traffic accidents were responsible for 43,510 deaths in the United States – a figure that includes pedestrian fatalities.

    The decline varied by region, and New England experienced the biggest drop, fatalities down by 7.2% last year.  In the American heartland, including Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, the death toll dipped 5.3%. But the three-state region including Hawaii, California and Arizona bucked the trend, with fatalities actually increasing by 3.3% last year. 

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    Despite the overall decline, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has repeatedly said the traffic fatality rate is still too high and is pressing for further efforts to bring it down.  The agency is in the preliminary stages of preparing new rules to address what LaHood has described as an “epidemic” of distracted driving deaths.

    NHTSA, meanwhile, is proposing new rules that would mandate a brake-throttle override, a system that would cut engine power if a motorist were to inadvertently hit both the brake and throttle at the same time.  Such driver error has been blamed, in many cases, for reports of so-called unintended acceleration. 

  • Tracking your kids for safety -- and for health

    Wp Simon / Getty Images stock

    By Suzanne Kantra, Techlicious.com

    Technology makes it possible to keep tabs on our kids in a way our parents couldn’t. We can put GPS trackers on them and in the vehicles they drive, get text messages automatically when they return home from school, get an audible alert when a toddler strays, and soon, even updates on whether or not they’ve brushed their teeth.

    Each act of tracking has its health and/or safety benefits and it’s easy to see why parents would want to use these helpful products. Their use, though, raises questions. Are we using technology in instances when we should be parenting? And, are we raising a generation whose expectation of privacy that’s very different from ours?

    Each family needs to assess their kids and their situation, and then weigh the benefits of tracking technology against the invasion of privacy.

    For instance, I wouldn’t argue against using a proximity sensor that would alert me to when my toddler wanders more than 150 feet away. I’ve had a few heart-stopping moments when I realized I was watching the wrong blue jacket. But I also worry that using an alarm regularly might make me less vigilant, so I’d probably only use it in crowded places like Disneyland.

    The bottom line is that technology is a tool that when used wisely can help. Check out the following devices and tell us which ones make sense and which have taken things a step too far.

    Brickhouse Security

    Toddler Tag
    Clip the Toddler Tag Child Locator to your child’s clothing or bag, and a 56dB alarm will sound if he wanders more than 30 feet from the parental locator unit. Or press a button at any time to trigger the alarm, if you lose sight of him.
    Price: $39.95 on BrickhouseSecurity.com

    GreenGoose

    GreenGoose Toothbrush Tracker
    No more breath tests — sensors inside the Toothbrush Tracker register when your child has brushed her teeth. The device, which attaches to any toothbrush, sends a signal back to a receiver, called the GreenGoose Egg, which connects to your home’s Wi-Fi router. The Egg then sends a notification to the app you download to your iPhone (Android version coming later this year).

    Also later this year, you’ll be able to purchase a kit to track how well you’re taking care of your pet. Inside you’ll find the Egg, a leash sensor to track when and how long you walk the dog, a collar sensor to measure when you play with him, a food sensor to note when you feed him and a treat sensor.
    Price: $49 for the starter kit, $9 for additional sensors on GreenGoose.com

    Schlage

    Schlage LiNK Wireless Keypad Deadbolt Starter Kit
    With the Schlage LiNK Internet-enabled door lock, you can receive a text message alert each time your latch-key kid uses her unlock code, letting you know she arrived safely home. Or, if you prefer she use a physical key, you can use any computer, iPhone or Android phone to remotely unlock the door. If you cancel your subscription, the codes will continue to work and you can program new ones manually using the door lock.
    Price: $213.17 on Amazon.com plus $8.99 per month subscription

    Cellphone Tracking Services
    When you give your child a cellphone, you can track their location — or at least the location of the phone. For $5 a month, Sprint will let you locate up to four phones with its Family Locator service. AT&T’s Family Map service locates two people for $9.99 a month, or five people for $14.99. With the Verizon Family Locator ($9.99 a month), you can set up location-based alerts so you know when your child gets home, in addition to locating anyone on your Family Share plan. And, T-Mobile just added its FamilyWhere service, which enables you to track up to 10 mobile devices.

    inthinc Technology Solutions Inc

    Tiwi
    You can’t always be in the car with your new teen driver, so Tiwi does the monitoring — and nagging — for you. It monitors speed, whether your child is wearing a seatbelt, how aggressively he’s driving and whether he’s traveled outside his designated SmartZone.

    Any concerns and the device will tell your teen and send you a text message, voicemail or email. The device and plans are pricey, with a month-to-month contract costing $24.99 a month, plus $599 for the hardware; or a one-year contract costing $54.99 month plus $299 for the hardware. For an extra fee, you can add voice service ($2.99 a month plus $15 cents per minute) or roadside assistance and emergency support ($9.99 per month), which includes voice service.

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  • Was study of digital billboard safety botched?

    A study of electronic billboards and traffic safety commissionedtThe Federal Highway Administration was supposed to have been completed in 2009, but it remains cloaked in mystery.

    By Myron Levin, FairWarning

    Billboard companies are moving aggressively to plant digital signs along U.S. highways and city streets. But debate persists on whether the eye-grabbing displays, which typically change messages every 6 to 8 seconds, pose a risk to traffic safety.

    Combatants in the billboard wars -- including local and state officials under industry pressure to permit more of the lucrative signs -- are eager for a study by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). They have hoped that the much-anticipated study, launched in 2007, would help clarify some key safety questions.

    Yet the politically sensitive research, which was supposed to have been wrapped up in 2009, remains cloaked in mystery. All the FHWA has said, time after time, is that the study is under review.

    It turns out that officials may be afraid to make an embarrassing admission.

    According to records obtained by FairWarning under the Freedom of Information Act, expert reviewers have told the FHWA that the study appears to have been botched. The key findings vary so wildly from previous research that, as one reviewer put it, they “are not plausible.”

    The agency has refused to answer questions. “We have no one available to be interviewed,” said spokesman Doug Hecox, adding that “internal discussions about the draft of the study are ongoing.” He would not say if FHWA plans to toss the research or try to salvage it.

    The hundreds of pages of agency emails and other records reviewed by FairWarning, however, speak loudly about the political and financial stakes, as well as industry efforts to influence public opinion.

    The unreleased draft, which drew withering critiques from two experts, gave the billboard industry what it wanted, the documents show. Those results indicated that drivers’ glances at billboards were exceedingly brief, suggesting that the displays aren’t a threat to traffic safety. 

    Yet the billboard industry, led by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, was deeply worried. The trade group campaigned to remove a study consultant that the industry accused of having an anti-billboard bias and brought out its own studies to frame public debate while the FHWA was still studying the issue.

    Digital signs proliferate
    Today, of more than 400,000 billboards in the U.S., estimates of digital displays range from slightly more than 2,000 to as many as 3,200. The industry has been adding hundreds of the more-profitable signs each year.

    The FHWA study followed a controversial memo by the agency in September 2007 that appeared to green light the digital expansion. The memo stated that electronic displays were not prohibited under longstanding federal-state agreements that ban “intermittent’’ or ‘’flashing’’ signs. 

    Anti-billboard groups, including Scenic America, denounced the memo as farcical, saying billboards that alternate content every few seconds are the exact definition of “intermittent’’ signs. Responding to attacks, the FHWA said that it was only clarifying existing policy. 

    Stung by backlash from the memo, the FHWA launched its study. It relied on sophisticated instruments to monitor how long drivers on fixed routes in Reading, Pa., and Richmond, Va., glanced at digital billboards.

    “Lots of interest from all sides,” said an email from senior agency official, referring to the research. “There is huge money involved here, so the interests are getting pretty strident.” 

    A consulting firm, Science Applications International Corp., was hired to run the study. It brought on Jerry Wachtel, a Berkeley-based traffic safety expert, as an adviser. Science Applications declined comment.  

    The industry at the time was smarting from a report by Wachtel for Maryland transportation officials. They had asked him to review two industry-sponsored studies that the industry said confirmed the safety of digital billboards. Wachtel’s report said both studies were biased and misleading. 

    Scenic America

    A Clear Channel digital billboard advertises itself through electrical wires in Sarasota, Fla.

    In a seemingly orchestrated campaign, several industry groups and members of Congress fired off letters attacking Wachtel and seeking his removal from the FHWA study. In its letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the outdoor advertising association blasted what it called Wachtel’s “high-profile activism.” 

    Five House members from Pennsylvania — Democrats Jason Altmire, Christopher Carney and Tim Holden, and Republicans Charles W. Dent and Todd Russell Platts — signed a letter to FHWA Administrator Victor Mendez complaining of biased remarks by Wachtel at a hearing on billboards in their state. His involvement, they wrote, “may undermine the credibility of ongoing federal research.”

    Billboard industry's political donations
    All five lawmakers have received campaign support from billboard executives or political action committees since 2006, according to research by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. The donations totaled at least $26,484. 

    Altmire spokesman Richard Carbo said in an email that the congressmen “were concerned that the reports from the Federal Highway Administration were not unbiased.  That was the only purpose of the letter.”

    In fact, Wachtel’s role was limited and his involvement basically had ended by the time of the protests.  However, FHWA officials wanted to avoid any appearance of caving in. “I think we have to be very careful in dealing with this issue,” one official said in an email.  “We do not want industry dictating whom we may or may not employ on our projects.” 

    Responding to the outdoor advertising association, FHWA Associate Administrator Gloria Shepherd wrote: “We are well aware of the sensitive nature of this research. … I can assure you that we will be monitoring’’ the work “to be sure it is accomplished in an objective manner.” 

    Wachtel, who has worked for billboard companies in the past, told FairWarning that “in their eyes, I have been both the world’s smartest guy and the world’s worst individual. I’m the smartest guy when I tell them what they want to hear.” 

    In response to questions from FairWarning, the association said in an email that “OAAA and the outdoor industry support fair research. In fact, we’ve researched traffic safety for years. …The results have not indicated a correlation between digital billboards and traffic accidents.” 

    Records show that FHWA officials rebuffed a Freedom of Information request from an industry lawyer to disclose the research locations, saying they would be kept secret “until the tests are completed to protect the integrity of the results.” 

    But the industry found out, anyway. It launched its own studies in Reading and Richmond and blared the results. “Digital Billboards Not Linked to Accidents,” a press release said. 

    Records show the FHWA study was submitted in September 2010, and circulated for internal review in the fall. “The final report is scheduled to be released to the public in December 2010,” an agency memo said. 

    However, the review continued into 2011, when the two outside experts criticized it. Identified only as “REVIEWER 1” and “REVIEWER 2,” they concluded that the data appeared to be wrong. 

    Distracted driving research has sought to find the amount of time when drivers looking away from the road raises the risk of a crash. In the scientific literature, glance times associated with a higher crash risk have been variously estimated at 2 seconds, 1.6 seconds or three-quarters of a second. 

    Almost impossible
    In the FHWA study, recorded glances were so brief that none came close to 2 seconds or even 1.6 seconds. Only about 1 percent were above three-quarters of a second.

    In fact, the average was slightly below one-tenth of a second -- a number both expert reviewers considered almost impossible.

    “The reported glances to billboards here are on the order of 10-times shorter than values reported elsewhere,” one reviewer wrote. “The pattern of results certainly raises questions over the quality and legitimacy of the underlying data.’’

    The other said, “The data reported as average glance durations are not plausible.”

    Two other experts contacted by FairWarning confirmed that the data was highly suspect.

    Alison Smiley, president of Human Factors North, Inc., in Toronto, said the glance times were “extremely short’’ and substantially at odds with her own studies.

    Paul A. Green, a research professor at the University of Michigan Transportation Institute, said glances so brief would mean the drivers “never really looked’’ at the billboards.

    “It’s a flaw in the data,” Green said. “You wonder, if they made this mistake did they make other mistakes?” 

    FairWarning is a nonprofit, online investigative news organization focused on public health and safety issues.

  • Jogger: Dogs 'gnawing at my body like I was hamburger'

    A 62-year-old Chicago man who lost his foot after being viciously attacked by two pit bulls says he believes the dogs were "trained to kill." WMAQ-TV's Michelle Relerford reports.

    By NBCChicago.com

    CHICAGO -- Joseph Finley says avoiding death was the only thing going through his mind when two pit bulls viciously attacked him during his early-morning jog along Lake Michigan, an assault that ended up with the loss of his left foot.

    "I couldn't believe these dogs were attacking me. I couldn't believe this was happening to me," he said from a hospital bed at John H. Stroger Jr., Hospital of Cook County on Tuesday. "The only thing in my mind was if this is happening to me, the only thing I can do is survive. So in my mind: survive, survive."

    The attack went on for several minutes, he said, describing that the dogs were "yanking and biting and tearing and pulling and gnawing at my body like I was hamburger."

    Read original story at NBCChicago.com 

    Finley, by all accounts a healthy and strong 62-year-old man, did survive, but just barely. Doctors said he was very rough shape when he was brought into Stroger Hospital.

    "It was a rough go for several days. He was on a breathing machine. He was very sick. He got a lot of blood. I mean, his injury was nearly equivalent to stepping on a landmine," Dr. Andrew Dennis said.

    Doctors knew almost immediately they wouldn't be able to save Finley's left foot, and there was so much damage to soft tissue that it affected his kidneys.

    Still, Dennis said Finley made remarkable progress in the two weeks since the attack. So much so that doctors feel comfortable exchanging Finley's environment from the trauma unit to an area rehabilitation center.

    "We always thank God when we get a good result, but I think ... this is an incredibly strong man and he did most of the work," Dr. Kimberly Joseph.

    'Trained to kill'
    Finley said he was just about to begin the third lap of his run along Lake Michigan at Rainbow Beach Park when he noticed the dogs. He tried to maneuver around them, he said, but they attacked.

    "These were not just regular dogs. No. These dogs attacked in a way of dogs that have been trained to kill," he said, describing how the pair of dogs grabbed each foot and seemed to work in a coordinated effort to take down their victim.

    His ordeal ended when he heard a voice yelling at the dogs to get away. Then there were gunshots and he felt the dogs release their grips. Finley said he doesn't remember anything about a man beating the dogs with a tire thumper. Responding police officers shot and killed both dogs.

    The owner of the two pit bulls has since been cited but has not had any charges made against him. It's a fact that's infuriating to Finley.

    "I think there should be criminal charges for this. Yes, 100 percent," he said.

    Asked if there was anything he'd like to say to the dogs' owner, a clearly upset Finley thought for a moment and then declined.

    "I would -- I really would not care to answer that question at this point," he said.

     More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

  • Proposed cellphone ban splits police, lawmakers

    John Walls, vice president of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, discusses the NTSB proposal.

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    The government's proposal to ban drivers from using cellphones in any way — even with hands-free help — is dividing police and lawmakers alike, who agree on one thing: Any such ban would likely be hard to enforce.

    The National Transportation Safety Board urged all 50 states Tuesday to ban drivers from using portable electronic devices, with only two exceptions: You could still use GPS navigation devices, and you could use your cellphone in an emergency.

    US calls for ban on in-car phone use ... even with Bluetooth

    The effectiveness of any such ban would come down to enforcement by local authorities, something that not all of them agree on.

    Michigan State Police are already having a tough time enforcing the state's ban on texting while driving, and expecting troopers to be able to tell whether someone is talking through a tiny earpiece is "an unrealistic expectation for law enforcement," State Trooper Jamie Voss told NBC station WPBN of Traverse City. 

    Todd Nehls, sheriff of  Dodge County, Wis., said he also wouldn't support a ban, telling NBC station WTMJ of Milwaukee that "millions of people talk on the cellphone and drive safely every day" — echoing the contention of the Consumer Electronics Association one of two industry trade groups the NTSB singled out to lead development of safer technology.

    More on this story:

    "Rather than prohibit using cellphones, we should continue to educate the public about the dangers of using cellphones while driving," Nehls said.

    But Tennessee Highway Patrol Sgt. Randall Martin contended that a complete ban would actually be easier to enforce than the state's current ban on texting while driving is illegal. 

    Under current law, Martin told NBC station WBIR of Knoxville, it's difficult to tell whether a person is texting or dialing. A total ban would eliminate the guesswork because drivers wouldn't be allowed to touch their phones at all.

    "Anything that's going to take a distraction out of a driver's hand or field of view is a bonus," Martin said.

    The NTSB's recommendation isn't binding, which means enactment "will probably be a patchwork implementation as it goes and most likely driven by reformers at the state level," said Michael Wolf, a political science professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

    The federal government could bring extra pressure to bear, Wolf told NBC station WISE of Fort Wayne, by enacting measures "to coerce states through withholding federal highway funds or save other grants to move them in that direction."

    Lawmakers agreed that putting together a nationwide ban would be difficult.

    Delegate Cheryl Glenn, a Democrat from Baltimore who's a member of the Maryland House transportation subcommittee, said a total ban probably isn't realistic in any state, because most offenses wouldn't be considered major driving offenses.

    "You can be right next to the police and talking away, and they can't do a thing to you unless you run a red light," Glenn told NBC station WBAL of Baltimore. 

    Lawmakers in several other states said essentially the same thing: A ban on phone conversations probably wouldn't fly. 

    "I don't think you'll get that passed," Republican Utah state Sen. Lyle Hillyard told NBC station KSL of Salt Lake City.

    And Rep. Joe Palmer, chairman of the Idaho House Transportation Committee, said a blanket approach would be especially unworkable in a rural state like his, where long, open stretches of highway pass through multiple unincorporated areas without police agencies.

    "I recommend more education," Palmer told NBC station KTVB of Boise. "It's not safe for people to be driving and texting, but it's a bigger issue than that."

    An Ohio businessman, meanwhile, raised a separate objection.

    "That would have a negative impact on our business," said Derek Temke of A-Abel Heating and Air Conditioning in Dayton. 

    Like many other businesses that make house calls — think UPS, FedEx and just about every pizza chain in the country — "I drive around all day, and I am making calls to customers," Temke told NBC station WDTN of Dayton. "It could cost us a lot of money and a lot of time, because we would have to pull over to talk on the phone." 

    Even so, Temke said he understands why some people want a total ban.

    "Cellphones can be dangerous," he said.

    More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

  • Scientists endorse driver cellphone proposal

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Medical scientists strongly endorsed the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation Tuesday to ban nearly all use of cellphones and other portable electronics by drivers, saying the gizmos are just too distracting for the limited multitasking power of the human brain.

    "I wholeheartedly support a ban on personal electronic devices, which provide an unprecedented degree of distraction that's very dangerous," said Dr. Lisandro Irizarry, chairman of the emergency department at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York.

    The National Transportation Safety Board wants all 50 states to ban personal electronic devices for drivers. NBC's Tom Costello reports.


    "Everyone from teenagers to senior citizens is texting," he said in an email to msnbc.com. "It's very easy to get distracted, especially when driving, and end up in the ER."

    The NTSB's recommendation specifically said so-called hands-free devices, like Bluetooth headsets, don't solve the problem and should be part of the ban. 

    US calls for ban on in-car phone use ... even with Bluetooth

    That sounds great to Dr. Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a neuroscientist who has studied how using cellphones impairs driving ability.

    "Use of cellphones while driving — handheld or not — is really a hazard, a threat to public safety," Just told msnbc.com. "It costs lives."

    The problem is that people think they're better drivers than they really are, and so they believe they can multi-task behind the wheel. 

    "When you're driving, it feels kind of automatic, so it feels like you're not doing anything, but it's not true," Just said. "Various parts of your brain are working on scanning the road ahead, maintaining your speed, maintaining your lane — all of those things are being done even when it feels like it's not.

    Obviously, we can do two things at the same time," he said. "But the critical point is we can't do them as well at the same time."
    Processing a conversation with another person consumes 37 percent of the energy that's normally allocated to driving, Just's research indicates. That's "a very, very large percentage that has serious consequences for safety," he said.

    While carrying on a conversation in person with a passenger is distracting, "typically there isn't quite as much a social onus on continuing the conversation," he said.

    In other words, a passenger who's in the car with you knows enough to shut up if you encounter a hazard on the road. But "with a person on the other end of a cellphone, they don't know to stop talking if something happens," he said. 

    While he hasn't quantified the difference, Just said, he's convinced "it's worse with a cellphone."

    More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

  • Take our poll: Should the US ban handheld cellphones for drivers?

    By msnbc.com staff

    The government's transportation safety experts are recommending that all American drivers be banned from using any cellphone — even if you use a hands-free device. Follow this link to take a poll on the proposed ban.

  • US calls for ban on in-car phone use ... even with Bluetooth

    The report isn't binding, but it's likely to be influential with lawmakers. NBC's Tom Costello reports.

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Updated at 4 p.m. ET: The government's transportation safety experts recommended Tuesday to ban all American drivers from using portable electronic devices — including cellphones, even if you use a hands-free device.

    The recommendation, which isn't binding but which is likely to influence the decisions of Congress and state legislatures in writing  new safety laws, makes only two exceptions: You could still use GPS navigation devices, and you could use your cellphone in an emergency.

    "No call, no text, no update, is worth a human life," Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference in Washington.

    Besides calling for government action, the NTSB also urged consumer electronics manufacturers to figure out a way to "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion" while at the same time being able to turn themselves  back on in an emergency.

    Jason Oxman, a senior vice president of the Consumer Electronics Association, said that as far as he knew, "nothing that would meet all of those parameters would exist today."

    In general, Oxman  told msnbc.com, the focus should be on drivers' choices, not on "specific devices." He endorsed the NTSB's recommendations to the extent that they would regulate activities that take the driver's eyes off the road — “manual texting while driving, for example, you shouldn't be allowed to do it," he said. But he criticized the safety board's suggestion to disallow hands-free devices like Bluetooth earpieces.

    "It may be that NTSB, in searching for a solution, is not aware of all of the technologies that exist today, and that is one reason we look forward to the opportunity to work with them," he said.

    Safety advocates have long called for such a ban like the one the NTSB proposed Tuesday to reduce the phenomenon of distracted driving, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says killed 3,092 people in 2010.

    The NHTSA reported last week that about 20 percent of all drivers and 50 percent of drivers 21 to 24 years old admit to having texted while driving. Overall, more than three-quarters of drivers say they are willing to answer calls on all, most or some trips.

    "People continue to make bad decisions about driving distracted — but what's clear from all of the information we have is that driver distraction continues to be a major problem," NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said last week in reporting the numbers. 

    Scientists strongly endorse NTSB proposal

    But similar studies linking cellphone use to poor driving have been challenged, most recently by researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit, who concluded last month that some earlier studies were seriously flawed.

    The report, published in the journal Epidemiology, examined to earlier studies that examined crashes in which cellphone records showed that the driver had used a cellphone. Those studies "likely overestimated the relative risk for cellphone conversations," the researchers said, because they improperly assumed that the drivers were actually in motion when they were on the phone — in other words, they didn't factor in such so-called part-time driving.

    Abstract: Cell Phone Use and Crash Risk: Evidence for Positive Bias

    Only 10 states ban handheld devices right now, and 35 ban texting while driving.

    The recommendation comes following the NTSB's investigation of an August 2010 accident in Gray Summit, Mo., involving a pickup truck, two school buses and several other vehicles. 

    Driving and texting: msnbc.com cartoonists weigh in

    The accident was blamed on the 19-year-old driver of the pickup, who sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes before the pileup, which killed two people and injured 38 others.

    "That finding raises a red flag to all of us on the highways," Hersman said.

    Full NTSB report on 2010 Missouri crash

    The NTSB recommendation wouldn't cover GPS devices, but — if it eventually becomes law — it would ban using your phone for any reason, even with a Bluetooth headset or speakers. The only exception would be to call 911 in an emergency.

    NBC News' Tom Costello contributed to this report from Washington.

    More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

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