Many states have enacted laws to make texting while driving a ticketing offense, including Washington State and New York. States are further tightening these laws by making them primary offenses. Before, texting was considered a secondary offense — you could only be prosecuted for texting while driving if the police happened to stop your car for another (primary) offense. Now states are recognizing the seriousness of the problem, and in some states, texting itself is cause enough to be pulled over and issued a ticket. New York State is committed to aggressive enforcement of this regulation, and backs it up with a $150 fine. If they find you doing any of these things with electronic data, you get a ticket:
- sending
- composing
- reading
- browsing
- accessing
- saving
- transmitting
- retrieving
In addition, you are not allowed to take, view or transmit images while driving.
These New York rules are important, especially in the New York City region, because of the residents’ notorious habit of non-stop work. Busy executives, salesman, stock brokers and politicians seem to be permanently attached to their cell phones, either speaking or texting. Many of them don’t see why they should stop just because they are driving a car at the same time. After all, New York City is the big time, and if you can text there, you can text anywhere.
This law will save lives, because New Yorkers are already crazy drivers. Cell phones are just like pouring gasoline on a fire. We can just envision some marketing type trying to sell leads to prospects via texting while careening down Fifth Avenue like a madman. Or picture a fashion model describing in exquisite detail what she didn’t eat for lunch to some third rate gossip columnist while driving a little two-seater on Central Park West. If it was just the drivers at risk, we wouldn’t be nearly as concerned. But the truth is that innocent people die because of the negligence of texting drivers.
More states have to step up to the plate and make texting a primary infraction that carries a stiff fine. We’d also like to see accident cases involving texting drivers be prosecuted with special aggravating circumstances, so that the driver would have extra time tacked on to any jail sentence. Only by getting serious with this kind of scofflaw will we be able to make a dent in the irresponsible epidemic of texting while driving. We say throw the book at them!