Tracy Samilton

There are plenty of apps for smart phones if you want to play games or catch sales at the stores.

But more and more, the smart phone is becoming a safety device as well.

Recently, the American Red Cross launched an app that will warn you if a tornado has been spotted in your area.

Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in the app business.

NHTSA has launched a new app that will tell you if there is a recall for your vehicle.  You can also register a safety complaint about your vehicle through the app.

Ninety-thousand migrant workers and their families travel to Michigan each year to pick the state's fruit and vegetable crops.

Most travel from Texas and Florida to get here.  That's a long way.

State officials say those workers often have a choice about where they'll work in the summer - and it doesn't have to be Michigan. 

So keeping migrant housing decent and safe is crucial.

There's good news and bad news for residents with drinking water wells near the Kalamazoo River. A massive oil spill contaminated the river in 2010.

State officials tested 150 of the residential water wells for contaminants.

“Now the oil related chemicals, those would have been iron and nickel, they were detected in a few wells but nothing but was levels of concern,” says Angela Minicuci, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Community Health.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expanding a pilot program to help children get nutritious meals when their school's free lunch program has shut down for the summer.

For a long time, the agency has funded a program that sets up meal sites at churches and other locations, where children can go to get meals in the summer time.

But many children in rural and inner-city neighborhoods have no site near them, or no safe and reliable way to get there.

The reason we're supposed to wear seat belts is pretty clear to most of us by now.  It's to keep us from becoming human projectiles in a crash.

That's the same reason more and more dog owners are buying safety harnesses for their dogs.  But, unlike seat belts, there is no independent testing of dog harnesses and no national standard.

The Center for Pet Safety hopes to change that.

Last year, the group selected four of the strongest safety harnesses intended for large dogs and tested them with a new dog test dummy on a track.

The American Red Cross has launched a new app for I-phones and Android phones that could be life-saving.

The app sends out a piercing siren-inspired

alert when a tornado warning has been issued.  The app also sends an alert for severe thunderstorms and flood warnings.

Tim Lipan is Executive Director of the Muskegon Red Cross.   He says the severe weather season is  just around the corner, and Michigan has its fair share of tornados.

I recently conducted my own, informal test of the fuel economy of the Ford hybrid crossover, the C-Max.  I was curious to see what number I could achieve, in light of the ongoing controversy.

Consumer Reports and now two lawsuits claim Ford's advertised number of 47 mpg is unreachable.

So, on a 30-degree evening, not too windy, no snow in the forecast, I set out from Ann Arbor, reset the fuel economy calculator, set the cruise control at 55 miles per hour, and drove.

Chrysler says it will add up to 1,250 new jobs in Kokomo, Indiana as it begins to produce a new fuel-efficient nine-speed transmission.

That brings the number of new jobs created since the company emerged from bankruptcy to more than 8,000.

The Detroit-based automaker will invest $375 million in its four transmission and casting plants in Kokomo, Indiana.

Chrysler is already building an eight-speed transmission at the Indiana facilities and it will add a nine-speed transmission next year.

Car companies like Ford Motor Company aren't above using gimmicks if it will get reporters to notice something they're doing.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 

This one worked.

General Motors made nearly $5 billion in 2012.

That's down a lot from 2011, when the company made $7.6 billion.

But GM CEO Dan Akerson says it was a strong year for the company nonetheless.

He says G-M "planted the seeds of growth in every region of the world."

The Detroit automaker reduced its pension obligations, bought an international finance division, and put new cars in the pipeline for 2013 and beyond.

J.D. Power reports that average vehicle dependability was better than any year since the study began in 1989.

The study looks at problems reported for three-year-old vehicles.  So, the 2013 study looks at vehicles purchased in 2010.

On average, there were 126 problems reported for every 100 vehicles - or, put another way, not much more than one problem per vehicle.

Lexus once again led the pack, improving from 86 problems per 100 last year, to 71 this year.

Porsche followed with 94, and Lincoln was third best, with 112.

Ford Motor Company set an all-time record for hybrid sales in December, selling nearly 8,000.  About half were C-Max sales, and about half, the hybrid version of the Fusion.

The company also beat its previous January record for hybrid sales by more than 500%.

Granted, the total number of hybrid sales for the company isn't much compared to its higher-volume sellers.  Ford sold more than 19,000 non-hybrid Fusions in January, dwarfing the hybrid Fusion sales of 3,043.

Many of the claims for better fuel economy from new turbo-charged engines are more hype than reality, according to tests by Consumer Reports, the independent consumer advocacy group.

The agency tested a number of vehicles that offer regular four or eight cylinder engines, and compared them to the turbo-charged version.  Turbo-charging is a technology that gets more power from a smaller engine with direct injection of extra spurts of air and fuel.

Chrysler has gone from being the automaker nobody wanted, to the goose that lays the golden egg for its majority owner, Fiat.

While Chrysler made $1.7 billion in 2012, Fiat lost $1.4 billion, as the fiscal crisis in Europe deepened, creating a new bottom for car sales that even the most pessimistic analysts didn't see foresee.

But while Chrysler is making money, and Fiat is losing it, the two companies' CEO, Sergio Marchionne, reiterated in an analyst and media conference call that he has no intention of stripping cash from Chrysler to help Fiat.