Ontario: Distracted driving news

Ontario provincial police will be out in force Feb. 13-19 seeking violators of the handheld cell phone and texting law. This is the fourth and final sweep under the current “no excuses, no exceptions” distracted driving campaign.

OPP’s safety chief says that as of early February, eight people already have died in accidents linked to distractions. “We’re only five weeks into the new year and eight people have died already in distraction-related collisions on OPP patrolled roads — and that’s more than impaired driving and speeding fatalities combined,” said Chief Superintendent Don Bell.

Read the Ontario handheld cell phone, text messaging law. Fines are $155.

Results are far from scientific, but observational studies show distracted driving thrives in some of Candada’s major cities.

Students participating in an Allstate Insurance “Blow the Whistle” campaign counted more than 800 distracted drivers over the period of an hour at busy intersections in Moncton, Montreal and Toronto (one intersection per city). Insurance agents in Calgary, Edmonton, Sudbury, Ottawa, Windsor and Halifax spotted an additional 619 drivers. “All Canadian provinces now have distracted driving legislation in place, but it is not enough,” an Allstate spokesman said.

Eating and drinking were the most common distractions, while talking on a phone or texting made up 15 percent of all distraction citations, the report said.

Ottawa police said they wrote 227 tickets for distracted driving in November 2011. There was an emphasis on distracted driving that month under the city’s Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, which focuses on different problem areas each month.

Toronto police ticketed more than 700 motorists for violations of the province’s text messaging and cell phone laws during its mid-July 2011 road safety sweep.

Week 2 of Ontario’s distracted driving sweep ran July 11-17. Week one of the crackdown — tagged “Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other” — brought more than 1,600 citations (May 16-22). The fine for using handheld cell phones is $155 (CAN).

Ontario Provincial Police wrote more than 1,600 tickets for distracted driving over the 2011 Victoria Day weekend. Stepped-up enforcement was part of Canada Road Safety Week. OPP says fatalities on its patrolled roads are down 9 percent in 2011′s first quarter. The OPP wrote 8,522 citations in 2010, it said.

Toronto transit officials reportedly suspended 27 drivers for distracted driving violations in the first quarter of 2011. All but one got his job back, but the way is cleared for termination with a subsequent offense. The other driver was terminated. TTC riders filed 78 distracted driving complaints in February 2011 alone.

The Toronto Transit Commission says thanks but no thanks to riders’ photos and videos of bus drivers texting and talking on cell phones. Riders posted several pictures of drivers texting during the week of Jan. 23, 2011. Another rider sent the Toronto Star a shot of a driver reading a book while on the road.

“What we don’t want to see happen is people getting on board vehicles with their cameras rolling, taking pictures, it doesn’t help in our efforts to improve customer service,” a TTC representative said at the end of the week. “We don’t want this game of gotcha to be played out on the TTC.” Instead, the transit service asked for phone reports. The drivers union reportedly complained about the photos being taken.

In Toronto, police ran a one-day distracted driving sweep on Thursday, Nov. 24, yielding more than 70 tickets.

In Ontario, police handed out 45,975 tickets to distracted drivers in the period from from Feb. 1, 2010 (when active enforcement began), to Dec. 31, 2010. Fines of $155CAN didn’t kick in until Feb. 1.

A year after enforcement of the province’s handheld electronic devices ban, Toronto Police say they’re citing about 40 motorists a day.

Ontario’s law officers have cited more than 20,000 motorists for distracted driving infractions in the seven months since full enforcement of its law began in February 2010. Grace periods had been in effect since the law became official in late October 2009.

Ontario’s legislature voted unanimously on April 22, 2009, to ban motorists from text messaging, using handheld cell phones and other electronic devices connected with distracted driving. It went into effect Oct. 26. A previous plan to prohibit Ontario motorists from using cell phones without hands-free devices was shot down in October 2008.

The Ontario Medical Association had pushed for a ban on cell phone use in Canada while operating a vehicle, saying it is clear that any activity such as dialing, typing or reading a text message is unsafe for drivers and those around them.