State governments around the country are struggling with tax return identity theft, a problem so rampant that even TurboTax had to temporarily suspend electronic state filing. In Ohio, where 58,000 fraudulent tax returns have been intercepted this tax season, state officials have taken the drastic step of requiring some taxpayers to fill out an online quiz before accepting their returns.
For every 6 seconds of drive time, a driver sending or receiving a text message spends 4.6 of those seconds with their eyes off the road. This makes texting the most distracting of all cell phone related tasks. 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving.
Texting while driving has become a greater hazard than drinking and driving among teenagers who openly acknowledge sending and reading text messages while behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. The number of teens who are dying or being injured as a result of texting while driving has skyrocketed as mobile device technology has advanced. Researchers at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park estimate more than 3,000 annual teen deaths nationwide from texting and 300,000 injuries. The habit now surpasses the number of teens who drink and drive -- a hazard that has been on a dramatic decline in recent years, researchers say.