Cheers & Jeers
CHEERS to all who backed Illinois graduated driver licensing. Secretary of State Jesse White used National Teen Driver Safety Week to announce that teen driving deaths dropped by more than 50 percent since the law took effect in 2008. Those stricter laws grew out of the Teen Driver Safety Task Force formed in 2006. Among them were increasing driving experience, limiting in-car distractions including number of passengers and cell-phone use and requiring teens to earn their way from one stage to the next by avoiding traffic convictions.
OPINION: The culture Illinois needs
Jim Burns, the inspector general for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, visited the newspaper this week to tell us that he really didn't have much to tell us. It was great news.
In the past nine years since Burns' arrival, the office that was a scandal-plagued, corrupt mess under former Gov. George Ryan has cleaned up its act. It adopted an attitude of zero tolerance for corruption. And it did it while the pay-for-play culture of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich swirled in Springfield, no small feat.
Gov. Pat Quinn set to sign ban on texting while driving
By Monique Garcia Tribune reporter
Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday is scheduled to sign into law a measure barring motorists from sending text messages while driving.
Illinois would join 14 other states and Washington in prohibiting the practice, which safety advocates say is dangerous and leads to crashes. The law would allow police to stop and ticket motorists for sending text messages, downloading ring tones or surfing the Internet on their mobile phones. It would take effect Jan. 1.
Handicap parking scofflaws: Anonymous complaints on Illinois Web site brings in 114 complaints
Georgia Garvey, Sally S. Ho
A program that allows citizens to file anonymous complaints on the Illinois secretary of state's Web site about people misusing parking reserved for the disabled has netted more than 100 tips since it launched in mid-June.
One recent report focused on a high school athlete who allegedly continued to use a disability parking placard after recovering from a knee injury, recounted Bill Bogdan of the secretary of state's office.
Organ-donor list grows to 3.2 million
More than 3 million people have signed up for Illinois' two-year-old organ and tissue donor registry.
Since the new list was created in 2006, prohibiting survivors from changing the deceased's donor wishes, more than half of the 6 million registrants cut out from the donor program are back.
No Rubber Stamp
Some supporters of Roland Burris say that resistance to seating him in the U.S. Senate amounts to racism. But one man who blocked his nomination, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, calls this a hollow distraction.
DUI offenders will need to buy locking devices in January
By Adriana Colindres GateHouse News Service
SPRINGFIELD - A new state law is cracking down on first-time DUI offenders in Illinois. As of Jan. 1, they will have to outfit their vehicles with alcohol-detection equipment if they want to drive legally to work or anywhere else while their licenses are suspended. The equipment, called an ignition interlock device, requires a driver to blow into a tube so his or her breath can be tested for liquor. The car won't start if alcohol is detected.
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