All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Dean Reynolds is a CBS News Correspondent based in Chicago.

To say times are tough economically in this country is an understatement. But the sheriff of Alexander County, Illinois has set a new standard for deprivation. Sheriff David Barkett had his official cruisers repossessed by the local bank in the county seat of Cairo.

Usually, when you see a lot of sheriff’s cruisers in a bank parking lot it means a crime has been committed. Say, a bank robbery. But not now. Four of Barkett’s five cruisers (the fifth one is in the shop for repairs) now sit humiliatingly in the lot of the First National Bank of Cairo, shorn of their emergency lights, antennae and even their seals. You can see the faint outline of them on the suddenly denuded cruisers.

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In Wales they are just astounded at the reaction to their public service announcement about the dangers of texting while driving.

The 30-minute video was made for use in schools in South Wales; it wasn’t even due to go into the curriculum till next year.

But a 4-minute excerpt landed on YouTube, a million and a half people saw it, and – police say – mostly positive reaction has flooded in.

See Richard Roth's Story here

There is much more to the video than the crash sequence that’s circulated on the internet. It is not just a record of a horrific fatal car crash caused by a distracted teen; it’s also the story of what happens next: the after shocks that change the lives of the young survivor and her family, and upset the equilibrium of the whole community.

It’s startling, seeing it, to learn it was made on such a small budget: about £10,000 or less than $20,000. The Gwent Police Force funded most of it; many of its officers and staff are in it, along with police and fire rescue vehicles and helicopters. Some of the actors are professional; but three of the most memorable characters – the driver of the car and her two friends and passengers – are very engaging local teenagers who were among 300 kids who auditioned.

I met Jennie Davies, Amy Ingram - both university students, and Laura Quantick who’s finishing at a local secondary school. What they shared before the experience of making the video was an interest in drama or music and a bit of experience in local productions. What they share now is an almost zealous – and very articulate – passion for spreading the lesson the video teaches, about the danger of texting while driving.

They are a bit astounded about the sudden attention that’s come to them and their work. Jennie plays “Cassie Cowan,” the “Cow” of the video’s title; she’s the driver of the crash car and, horribly scarred, its only survivor. “I figured I was doing a small film,” she told me, “a local film for Gwent police; and it’s turned into a massive YouTube sensation. It’s pretty crazy.” It was interesting, too, I thought – that Jennie doesn’t drive. Some of her scenes were recorded with the camera mounted on a towing truck pulling her car; and in some, a double was used.

Car accidents happen every day, and only rarely make the news. But sometimes you hear of one so tragic you can't stop thinking about it.

Last week, a woman named Diane Schuler got on the Taconic State Parkway in New York and headed in the wrong direction for nearly two miles. She collided with a truck and ultimately killed eight people, including her 2-year-old daughter, her three young nieces, three men in the other vehicle, and herself.

At first it was a mystery. Some suspected she became disoriented or perhaps had an aneurism. What other explanation could there be, given the precious cargo she had on board?

Well, today, prosecutors report that marijuana and twice the legal limit of alcohol were found in her blood stream.

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a person is killed by a drunk driver every 45 minutes. In this case, eight lives were lost in a matter seconds, making this senseless tragedy even more difficult to understand.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Katie's on assignment, this is Jeff Glor.

The waiting is over - 789 Chrysler dealers got the word today that they are out of business. That is a quarter of Chrysler's 3,200 locations.

For those getting the axe, the news hit hard and fast. Chrysler wants them gone by next month. Instead of having separate Dodge and Jeep dealers, for example, one will stay and one will go. There is no compensation and no appeal.

The dealers we spoke with are angry. Many spent millions on glitzy showrooms and put their homes on the line to stay in business. Many expect now to face bankruptcy themselves , and they worry about their employees, and suppliers, who may also go under.

And there is more to come. GM plans to close 1,100 dealers by next year.

Most analysts think the auto giants will survive, but in a story we've heard repeatedly this recession, for countless businesses which depended on the status quo, this truly is the end of the road.

Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.

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Johnathan Goodwin is a tinkerer through-and-through. He doesn't look at problems like most of us do. Perhaps it's his lack of formal schooling that allows him to be unconstrained, but it's amazing what he has been able to teach himself – and in the process, teach a lot of other grease monkeys and engineers – about cars. What he has been able to inspire in many others is remarkable.

The LincVolt is more than just a car. It has become a project that is inspiring an entire platform of change for the type of work that Goodwin does. Besides this amazing battery and rotary powered engine (a measely 1.3 liter one from an old Mazda) that can throw you back into your seat when he steps on the gas, it has enough power keep the lights on in your house. Working with the folks in Greensburg, Kansas (the town rebuilding completely green from the ground up after a catastrophic tornado wiped it off the map), this car will generates up to 75KW of power and can take a house completely off the electricity grid.

Imagine ...

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Three weeks after asking for a $25 billion taxpayer handout, the big three U.S. carmakers are at it again. But this time, they have detailed promises of how they will mend their ways.

GM, Ford and Chrysler all say they'll cut executive pay, with top bosses working for a salary of just $1 a year.

They'll also ask for concessions from workers, try to sell off some brands, and concentrate on producing fuel-efficient cars, such as electric and hybrid models.

It's a big change for companies that spent years and tens of millions of dollars lobbying against tougher fuel efficiency. The three CEOs learned from their PR blunder last time.

This time, they'll leave their corporate jets at home when they appear on Capitol Hill later this week. The heads of GM and Ford will make the 500-mile trek from Detroit in cars.

Since they're going to the same place, maybe they should consider a carpool.

Correspondent Trish Regan took a spin last night on the Evening News – a few of them, actually. Click on the monitor to the left to see her story about Electronic Stability Control, the new technology that will be required in all cars. And then read on for her description of what it was like. – Ed.


Well, I’m a believer. In electronic stability control, that is. All it took was driving with and without ESC (that’s the trade “lingo”) to convince me this could be a life saving technology. Consumer Report’s Chief Car Tester, David Champion, gave me a test drive (yes, the giant helmet was mandatory) to see how a car handles with and without stability control. For the first three times through the cones, David kept the stability control on. We drove at 50 miles an hour, veering around orange cones in a series of tight turns. Sure, we got thrown around a bit – but overall? The car made it through pretty easily.

The next step was to give it a shot WITHOUT the stability control. I braced myself for this one…and rightly so. The minute we tried to get around the first cone we began losing control. By the time we were trying to turn around the second cone, forget it. We were spinning in circles. My husband tells me, as a teenager he and his friends would get in their pickup trucks and do “donuts” on snowy Saturday mornings in their high school parking lot in Buffalo, New York… I’m guessing they would have liked this test drive…because that’s exactly what we did:-“donuts”. We repeated the test six times so that the cameraman could get all the angles -- and every time, we spun out.

The difference between having ESC and not having it, was remarkable. Imagine being on a highway and trying to quickly avoid something…you might swerve to your left and then try to pull to your right to get back to your lane. Without ESC, there is a high probability you’ll spin out of control. That’s the reason why studies predict ESC will save more than 10,000 lives a year. Consumer Reports says this is the biggest development in auto safety since the seat belt. I asked if there were any downsides at all to the technology. David Champion told me, he had looked but the only drawback he could find was that ESC wouldn’t allow people who wanted to spin their cars around for fun to do so…I guess future teenagers who like to do “donuts” (like my husband did!) will be out of luck.

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