Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

A British PSA illustrating the ramifications of texting while driving has been making waves not in Wales where it was produced, but in the US via YouTube and major news outlets.  This isn’t your average “this-is-your-brain-on-drugs” PSA.  Instead it’s a long (over four minutes) and graphic dramatization of what happens when a teenage girl decides to text message while driving.

We know that people respond much better to stories than they do to statistics. This particular story revolves around a group of happy-go-lucky teenage girls unaware that their actions are about to destroy many lives. Between the blood, disturbing images of screaming passengers, and a possibly dead baby, there’s enough to make anyone squeamish.  Since the PSA is too graphic for the US censors, you won’t be seeing anything like it on our TV screens (even YouTube insists viewers verify their age before viewing the video), but you have to wonder how effective it would be.

Personally the PSA doesn’t seem all that shocking. Perhaps I’m desensitized to violence on TV or maybe it’s no different than the totaled car parked in front of my high school before the prom —a good-in-theory, bad execution kind of thing.  Both the totaled car and this PSA seem too hypothetical and cheesy. According to a recent poll, however, I might be alone— the majority of Americans feel the PSA is both effective and necessary viewing for US audiences.

See it for yourself here (remember, it’s 18 and over only!).

A while back, the Obama administration asked people to submit video PSAs about Swine Flu. The finalists have been chosen. Now it’s up to the rest of us to pick the winner. You can vote one time for (or against) each video every day--until Sept. 16. The winner gets $2,500 and boundless fame. My own personal favorite is the one pictured here. 

For an excellent primer on what we are likely to experience this fall, check out David Brown’s Washington Post piece--on the 1957 flu, in all its eerie familiarity. Then, as in now, we were dealing with a new strain of influenza that was highly infectious but not highly fatal. Then, like now, there was a scramble to invent a vaccine--and it came too late for the peak of the season, which may happen this fall, as well. In both cases, the flu targeted young people--unlike normal seasonal flu.

Spoiler alert: At the end, the story tells us what we all want to know. How many people died? The usual caveats apply--we have much better antibiotics and antiviral drugs to mitigate against the flu today, and the vaccine is likely to be much more effective--once it finally comes out. But this still helps give us some idea of the scale we may be dealing with. Not Armaggedon, but not a normal flu season, either.

“In all, the 1957-58 pandemic was responsible for about 60,000 ‘excess deaths’ in the United States—deaths above what would have been expected in normal times. About 40,000 occurred in the summer and fall of 1957, and 20,000 in the winter of 1958. The toll is the equivalent of 107,000 people in the U.S. population today. On average, ordinary, or seasonal, influenza contributes to the deaths of about 36,000 people in the United States each year.”

I’ve always thought that the ability to talk on the phone while driving was part of the cabbie job description.  But until this New York Times article I had no idea it was actually illegal for NYC cabbies to talk on the phone while driving (the same cannot be same said for Washington, DC and many other cities).

While the law is largely unenforced, the dangers of cell phone use while driving are undeniable (drivers using cell phones are ”four times as likely to cause a crash.") But drivers aren’t the same thing as taxi drivers, right? Surely cabbies must be better equipped to deal with distraction. If anything, they simply drive more than the average person.  A 2004 study concluded that NYC cabbies were less crash prone than the average driver (crash rate was one-third lower than other vehicles), and as a result, fewer passengers are injured in taxis.

It’s hard to know how cell phone use affects the crash rate. According to the New York Times, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission doesn’t keep records of any taxi accidents (with or without cellphone use). In April, in an effort to improve passenger experience, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission considered installing cell -phone blocking technology in cabs, but idea was met with serious concerns over how such technology would interfere with emergency calls.

You could always ask your taxi driver to refrain from cell phone use, but it is a little scary to make unpopular demands of someone who holds your life in their hands… Anyone ever tried? Let us know!

This year, Americans will experience some 1,200 tornadoes and 8,000 wildfires. A handful of storms will probably turn into honest-to-God hurricanes. Disasters are getting more common and more expensive, largely because we keep moving more of our valuables into the country’s most beautiful, unstable places.

Watching over this all-night, boom-bust casino is Craig Fugate, the new head of FEMA under President Barack Obama. Check out my story in the new Atlantic about why Fugate, a former firefighter, is an unusual choice for the job.

My prediction is that Fugate’s personality will be an asset on some days--and a handicap on the Hill on other days. The little known secret about FEMA is that it doesn’t actually do anything; it just leverages partnerships with other organizations. As head of this giant co-op, Fugate will likely command the respect of many of FEMA’s partners. But he will also have to kowtow to Congress to get the resources he needs.