Court: Cell phone law covers stops
November 16, 2011
California’s law against use of handheld cell phones while driving applies when vehicles are stopped at traffic lights, an appeals court has ruled.
While the Legislature didn’t specifically address use of handheld electronics at stop lights, the First District Court of Appeal ruled Nov. 14 that the statute writers’ intent was to include vehicles on public roadways that are paused momentarily to obey traffic laws.
The judges cited “significant and numerous public safety hazards that likely would result” if they agreed with the defendant’s claim that the distracted driving laws did not apply to “fleeting” traffic stops.
Carl Nelson originally appealed his traffic court conviction in Contra Costa County Superior Court. Nelson, a lawyer, is expected to carry the case to the California Supreme Court.
Nelson, who was fined $103 for the 2009 incident, has said he hopes his appeals will provide clarity on the California distracted driving laws.
The three-judge panel, however, said matters were quite clear. “Defendant listened to his hand-held wireless telephone during a fleeting pause at a traffic light ‘while driving’ in Richmond and, therefore, violated section 23123, subdivision (a) (of the state traffic statutes).”
The California distracted driving law of 2007 reads: “A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving.”
Nelson’s case was based, in part, on a DUI case in which the state Supreme Court made a distinction between the terms “drive” and “operate.” The First District Court of Appeal judges said that ruling did not address “fleeting stops made while driving” and that the Legislature was not addressing any issues raised in the DUI case (Mercer v. Department of Motor Vehicles).
The appeals court judges said a ruling in Nelson’s favor “would open the door to millions of people across our state repeatedly picking up their phones and devices to place phone calls and check voicemail (or text-based messages) every day while driving whenever they are paused momentarily in traffic.”
The ruling applies to the separate statute against text messaging and use of handheld electronic devices while driving, the judges wrote.
Pennsylvania texting law breakdown
November 9, 2011
Specifics of the ban on text messaging that was approved by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett on Nov. 9, 2011:
- Prohibits as a primary offense all drivers from using an Interactive Wireless Communication Device (IWCD) to send, read or write a text-based message.
- Defines an IWCD as a wireless phone, personal digital assistant, smart phone, portable or mobile computer or similar devices that can be used for texting, instant messaging, emailing or browsing the Internet.
- Defines a text-based message as a text message, instant message, email or other written communication composed or received on an IWCD.
- Institutes a $50 fine for convictions under this section.
- Makes clear that this law supersedes and preempts any local ordinances
restricting the use of interactive wireless devices by drivers.
The law takes effect in early March 2012.
Source: Pennsylvania Office of the Governor
Despite the danger, we’re still talking
November 4, 2011
U.S. drivers recognize talking & texting as dangerous activities, but many continue to drive distracted anyway — even in high-risk traffic situations.
Nothing new there, but several recent surveys shed more light on the problem.
Results of five recent surveys regarding cell phone and texting use are consistent with attitudinal studies conducted over the past 10 years. The latest numbers strongly suggest that widespread distracted driving educational efforts still have a lot of work left to do.
A Roper poll of U.S. adults shows, in fact, that the higher the overall education level, the more likely a driver is to use a handheld cell phone or text message while behind the wheel.
The poll, sponsored by InsuranceQuotes.com, indicated 93 percent of all adults engage in some form of distracted driving.
About 40 percent said they crashed, received a ticket or exhibited dangerous driving behavior as a result. But when the sample size was limited to drivers with college degrees, the number increased to almost 50 percent.
When it comes to serious accidents, the well-educated drivers reported more than double the number of wrecks than all drivers. Similar but less dramatic increases were found among high-income drivers.
A study of teenage drivers indicates that they continue to become more aware of of the dangers of text messaging while driving, with six of 10 agreeing that texting was the most dangerous distracted behavior.
But more than half of the young drivers admitted to texting while driving at least sometimes, according to the annual Liberty Mutual Insurance and SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) study.
“More than 40 percent of teens who text while driving send more than 10 messages from behind the wheel each day,” the survey of almost 2,300 young drivers said.
Almost 7 out of 10 teens said they talked on a cell phone while driving.
67 percent of drivers surveyed by the AAA Foundation reported using a cell phone while driving in September, with one in three saying they frequently engaged in calls while behind the wheel.
More than a third of the drivers surveyed said they had text messaged while driving in the past month.
Of those admitting to talking and driving, “28% admitted to answering a call while driving on a freeway with heavy traffic more than half the time and 15% said they make calls on the freeway fairly often or regularly,” the Foundation reported.
More than half of those distracted drivers reported texting while stopped at red lights. And 16 percent admitted to reading text messages while driving in heavy freeway traffic.
Support for laws that ban texting while driving remains high, at 87 percent. About 70 percent of the 3,147 residents surveyed said they supported laws against handheld cell phone use while driving.
Another pair of surveys found a staggering amount of texting by younger adults and tracked the Internet use of smartphone owners.
About 83 percent of 10 U.S. adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them use their devices for text messaging, a Pew Internet report on texting behaviors found.
To no one’s surprise, young adults (18-24) were the heaviest users. But get this: They send or receive an average of 109.5 messages on any given day. “That works out to more than 3,200 texts per month,” Pew reported. The survey group as a whole (2,277 adults) averaged 41.5 texts a day.
The texting report also said half of the people who do the most texting would rather communicate by text instead of by a phone call.
“Overall, the survey found that both text messaging and phone calling on cell phones have leveled off for the adult population as a whole,” Pew researchers said.
Another Pew report found that a third of U.S. adults own smartphones. People under 45 were among the groups most likely to say they own one, the survey found.
Some 87% of smartphone owners access the internet or email on their handheld, including two-thirds (68%) who do so on a typical day. When asked what device they normally use to access the internet, 25% of smartphone owners say that they mostly go online using their phone, rather than with a computer.
The texting survey was done in April and May, and the smartphone study was conducted in May.
Pennsylvania bans texting & driving
November 1, 2011
Pennsylvania drivers will no longer be able to text message as of early March. Gov. Tom Corbett signed off on legislation Nov. 9 that bans texting while behind the wheel.
Fines will be $50. Enforcement is primary, which allows police to pull over drivers for that infraction alone.
“No text message is worth a human life,” Corbett said during the bill-signing event. “The message of this legislation is drive now and text later.”
(This content first posted on Nov. 1 and updated on Nov. 9.)
Pennsylvania has become the 35th state to outlaw texting while behind the wheel. The state’s long-running drama over distracted driving legislation will continue, however.
A provision in Senate Bill 314 that would have banned use of handheld cell phones while driving was removed by the House’s Republican leadership and the Senate went along, in order to get some kind of distracted driving law on the books.
The Senate voted Nov. 1 to approve the bill, a day after the House voted in favor of the measure.
The Senate already approved the bill earlier in the year, when it included a ban on use of handheld cell phones while driving. The House removed the mobile phone provision in mid-October and the Senate signed off on that change Nov. 1.
SB 314 sponsor Sen. Tommy Tomlinson, R-Bucks (pictured), said after the vote against texting & driving: “It’s one of the most important things we can do to prevent needless tragedies. Texting is one of the most dangerous distracted driving activities that motorists engage in. … The consequences can be deadly.”
House majority leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, indicated that legislation that would ban the cell phones remained under consideration. That’s good news for police, who under the new law will have to determine if a driver is texting or simply punching in a phone number.
Numerous distracted driving measures were submitted for the 2011 legislative session, as in past years.