A life-and-death drill for students

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• Texting by adult drivers is just as dangerous

  Texting by adult drivers is just as dangerous

  As my wife and I were driving home from visiting children in Southern California last week, we were scooting along the Interstate 405 freeway in the carpool lane and we noticed a car ahead of us kept inching across the white line and then back. As we passed cautiously my wife looked into the car and the driver, an adult woman, was texting.

  For the rest of the way home we started making notes of how many folks driving on the freeway, from Santa Monica to Atascadero, were using cellphones. And all of them were adults.

  We have been reading in the print media and told by television news about keeping teens off their cellphones, but I think it is only fair to broaden the message to include adults as well.

• Atascadero history gets a new look

  Atascadero history gets a new look

  I first met Steve Martin when he walked into my high school advanced speech class. Steve, along with a dozen other students, wrote, recorded and produced a 15-minute radio show that was broadcast over KPRL on Wednesday nights.

  It was the only positive thing I ever did as a teacher. Fortunately, I remain friends with many of those students, but more so with Steve. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Fresno State and spent much of his adult life in broadcast and print journalism and public relations before being hired as the executive director of Atascadero Main Street eight years ago.

  Often, we covered the same news event.

• Atascadero has enough in reserves to continue school bus rides, some of them long

  Atascadero has enough in reserves to continue school bus rides, some of them long

  The Atascadero Unified School District deals with some lengthy home-to-school trips that may be affected later after the state cut all school transportation funding for the rest of this fiscal year.

  Some students living in the remote California Valley must catch their bus as early as 5:30 each morning before traveling about 50 miles, with stops at various intervals, to arrive at Atascadero High School nearly two hours later.

  Those continuing on to Santa Rosa Academic Academy in Atascadero must tack an extra 40 minutes onto that travel time. The students face an equally long commute home, arriving back at Carrisa Plains School as late as 5:10 p.m.

• Program helps teen drivers gain traction against distraction

  Program helps teen drivers gain traction against distraction

  Spur-of-the-moment choices that cause drivers to look away from the road could mean injury or death. That’s the message Templeton High School students took home Wednesday after participating in special talks and activities to promote California Teen Safe Driving Week.

• Four years in prison for Nipomo driver who killed English cyclist

  Four years in prison for Nipomo driver who killed English cyclist

  A 21-year-old Nipomo man who, while drunk, crashed into and killed a cyclist from England last year in rural Arroyo Grande was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday in San Luis Obispo Superior Court.

  Judge Barry LaBarbera sentenced Aaron Ceja after emotional, detailed statements about the life and work of 26-year-old David Williams from Williams' father and sister.

  LaBarbera sentenced Ceja to a lower prison term than the possible 10 years in prison he faced.