Time to Put Down Your Cell Phone, It’s The Law!
As of Thursday June 10th, Washington State Patrol Officers will enforce a zero tolerance policy towards driving while holding your cell phone. Hands-free devices are okay, but if you're caught holding a phone up your ear, you'll be busted. At the Law Offices of Kirk Bernard, we're all for anything that will help reduce accidents caused by distracted drivers.
Washington State passed legislation two years ago which made the act a secondary violation, meaning that law officers had to have a primary offense to pull them over. Speeding, running a red light, or illegal lane changes were all things that would give them a reason to stop you. They could then issue an additional fee if they found you were talking on your cell phone.
Drive With Your Pet? You May Want to Reconsider…
While there aren't any definite statistics on actual accident rates involving pets and car accidents, the fact remains that they can put you at serious risk. Currently, pet related accidents are merely lumped into the distracted driving category along with swatting an insect or reaching for a coffee.
At this point in time, Hawaii is the only state to implement an outright ban on driving with your pet in your lap, claiming that pets interfere with a driver's ability to maintain control of the vehicle. Two years ago, governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a law passed by legislature that would fine drivers for having a pet in their lap. His reasoning was that he was only focused on passing laws that met California's top priorities at the time. Similar legistlation was shot down in Virginia. As a Personal Injury Attorney Seattle, I think that anything that can potentially decrease car accident rates should be a priority.
Police Struggle to Enforce Texting While Driving Laws
Even though states are cracking down on texting while driving by passing more stringent laws, it's ultimately up to law enforcement officials to put these laws into motion. They're finding that while these laws are great in theory, they're actually extremely difficult to actually enforce. Police officers are having a really hard time proving that someone was in fact texting while driving, and not just "talking" on their hand-held cell phone which is still legal in some states.
In 2007, a young girl was killed when a 17 year old driver smashed into the side of her car without so much as a tap to the brakes. The female driver was obviously distracted when the accident happened but without having witness accounts or without the driving admitting to texting, the victim's family will never know exactly why their daughter was killed that fateful night.
Georgia State Bans Texting While Driving
On April 27th, 2010, Georgia's House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill that bans texting and driving as well as talking on your cell phone while driving. Once the bill becomes a law, it will ban cell phone use for teens age 16 and 17, and will ban texting while driving for drivers of all ages. Offenses made by juvenile drivers come with a penalty of $150 fine with a 90 license suspension (or suspension until they turn 18 if that comes first). The $150 fine is doubled if another traffic violation occurs at the same time, for instance speeding while driving and texting. Adult drivers will only be fined $100.
Many feel that while the law is a step in the right direction, the penalties that come with it are not stringent enough to really deter people from texting while driving. Personal injury attorney, Kirk Bernard, feels that the law should extend to ban all drivers from talking on the cell phone while driving, regardless of their age.
If the bill becomes a law, it will be dubbed the Caleb Sorohan Act to commemorate Caleb Sorohan, a 19 year old boy who was killed due to an accident he caused by driving while text messaging. Currently, the bill is awaiting a signature from the Governor.
Georgia now joins the nine other States who have passed laws banning text messaging while driving. These other states include Oregon, Washington, New York, Colorado, and Virginia. Many of these states, such as Washington, have made texting and talking on a hand-held cell phone a primary offense so that a police officer can make a citation without needing another offense as a reason to pull the driver over.
As a Seattle personal injury lawyer, I have seen an explosion of car accidents caused by cell phone use and texting while driving over the last two to three years. Often times, the people who survive the accidents are still left with debilitating injuries that can last a lifetime. A Youtube video made by a police department in the UK is circulating at a rapid rate and was showcased in this clip from the Today Show. They created a public service announcement that graphically portrays a horrific car accident that kills four people, as a result of a driver who is text-messaging and crosses into oncoming traffic. You should be prepared that this video is extremely graphic, but it might be the key to discourage drivers from texting while behind the wheel.
More resources regarding texting and driving can be found here.
New App Prevents Texting While Driving
After a Washington man watched his three-year-old daughter narrowly avoid being hit by a driver who was distracted by texting on his cell phone, he decided to take action. There's no denying that driving while texting shifts your attention away from the road and can result in a catastrophic, if not fatal, Seattle car accident. Car and Driver Magazine published a study conducted by Virginia Tech that concluded drivers that text have slower reaction times than intoxicated drivers. Not only that, but those who choose to text while driving are almost 25 times more likely to be implicated in an auto accident.
Erik Wood teamed with software writers to bring OTTER to life. His software, which is an acronym for "One Touch Text Response," serves to inhibit people's instinctual need to respond to a text-message right away, even when they're driving. The application is set-up so that when you travel faster than 10 miles per hour, a GPS sensor will trigger your phone to go into an auto-reply mode. The phone won't alert the driver in any way that a text message has been received and it will send a customized response automatically to the sender.
Wood claims the software was designed to be used as a "tool, not a shackle" and was not intended to "impede on anyone's civil liberties." OTTER has also paired up with the Break the Habit Campaign which serves to educate teenagers about the dangers of texting while driving.
An added bonus that the software provides is decreasing distractions while working or studying. Wood has heard from users that are now much more productive during school or work hours by setting their phone to the auto-respond OTTER mode. This application works on the Google Android platform only and is available to download for $3.99.
We hope that more people will come forward with other smart ideas to make our roads safer and to help decrease accident rates. At the Law Offices of Kirk Bernard, we've seen way too many accidents caused by texting while driving that could have been easily avoided. To learn more about the Break the Habit Campaign click here. For more information about OTTER, please click here.