TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — For New Jersey drivers, the message is clear: Keep your thumbs on the wheel and off the keypad.
Beginning Saturday, police can slap drivers with a $100 fine for talking or sending a text message on hand-held devices.
New Jersey joins four other states, including neighboring New York, where talking on a hand-held cell phone is reason enough to get pulled over. The Garden State is the first where text-messaging on the road is a primary offense, meaning police need no other reason to pull a driver over, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Pam Fischer, director of New Jersey's Division of Highway Traffic Safety, said officers will be on the lookout for telltale signs of distracted drivers — slow driving and the "cell-phone weave."
Drivers can still use their cell phones to contact police or emergency services, and can talk at any time with a hands-free device. But crash statistics suggest that those headsets and earpieces may not make conversations in the car any safer.
In 2006, nearly half of the 3,580 phone-related crashes in New Jersey involved a hands-free device, according to transportation officials. Five of 11 fatal accidents involving a cell phone that year also involved a hands-free device.
Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said those figures are consistent with recent research showing no difference in crash risk between hand-held and hands-free cell phones.
"The conversation itself is the distraction," Rader said. "You are in another place when you are talking on the phone."
Trucker Lou Cataldo hopes the new law will cut down on the distracted drivers he sees across the state.
"I see a car in the middle lane doing 50 miles per hour, and 99.9 percent of the time it's someone yakking on a cell phone," he said.
But Cataldo questioned how police would spot drivers typing out a message.
"If you're doing 75 miles per hour," he said, "the cop has to be right alongside to see you."
Driving while using a hand-held cell phone has been illegal in New Jersey since 2004, when the state became the second in the nation to pass a ban. However, it was considered a secondary offense — something drivers could be ticketed for if they were pulled over for another reason. Over the past year, state courts have recorded 16,000 tickets issued for the offense.
Fischer predicted that number would rise significantly now that drivers can be pulled over for cell phone use alone.
Twenty-one state legislatures this year are considering some kind of ban on texting while driving.
"It's a popular issue this year," said Matt Sundeen, a transportation analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. "We expect to see some movement on this."
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Truth be told, I'd prefer a bigger fine, but it's a start.
Just annoyed that other states haven't followed up in this. I can't say I'm all that surprised at the stastics for cell phones and car accidents.
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In 2006, nearly half of the 3,580 phone-related crashes in New Jersey involved a hands-free device, according to transportation officials. Five of 11 fatal accidents involving a cell phone that year also involved a hands-free device.
Out of curiosity, I'm wondering what the statistics for age and gender were.
As much as people here in the Dirty Jerz bitch about all these laws and restrictions, they really do make for a more harmonious society. As the most densly populated state in the Union, we Jerseyans face unique problems in trying to co-exist, and frankly, stern regulation of certain aspects of life solves several problems quite nicely.
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New Jersey is banning cell phones? You mean up until now it was actually legal to drive and talk on a phone? US really needs to get with the program already.
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I'm a little surprised that the ban on cell-phone driving wasn't instantly applied to texting, if I remember an article on it correctly. I've seen people driving 10 mph under the speed limit on major highways because they were texting. It's a huge hazard, particularly at 50+ mph.
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Kane Starkiller wrote:New Jersey is banning cell phones? You mean up until now it was actually legal to drive and talk on a phone? US really needs to get with the program already.
Apparently the law prohibiting cell phone use was already on the books, but it wasn't enforced unless the police officer stopped the driver for some other traffic offense. Now, as of 1 March, it can be ticketed as soon as the officer sees someone driving while using the phone.
The prohibition against talking on your cell phone while driving without a hands-free headset is like smoking bans in bars and restaurants. It's going to attain a critical mass and spread across most states in a very short time. And it's a welcome change.
Very few things piss me off more than when I'm driving and I see some idiot trying to drive while texting or holding his phone up to his ear. They really are worse than drunk drivers. Oh but they're so important that they must be in contact every second of every day.
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Admiral Valdemar wrote:A woman over here just got 4 years for killing a cyclist as she was texting at the time.
How many other states have such laws in place?
Wait, I'm not sure how the law works, but, 4 years for running over someone and killing them?
Doesn't... isn't... that seems like a very short punishment for killing someone, even if it is accidental.
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Admiral Valdemar wrote:A woman over here just got 4 years for killing a cyclist as she was texting at the time.
How many other states have such laws in place?
I know DC has it and Maryland is considering it for the next legisltive session.
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Instead of banning specific implements of negligent driving where one is not paying sufficient attention to the road, it seems like it would be more constructive to enact harsh penalties for drivers who are found to be inattentive at the wheel.
The occasional distraction may be unavoidable; people are imperfect beings after all. But I've seen people using their rear-view mirrors to apply makeup while driving. I've seen people steering with their knees while they eat with both hands while driving. I've seen people reading a fucking newspaper while driving. I've seen people reading novels while driving. I've seen people using a laptop computer in the passenger seat while driving. I've seen people trying to find an address while reading a map while driving. All of these activities are horrendous and at least as serious a driver distraction as cell-phone use. So why not just make it possible for police to charge anyone who is deliberately engaging in any activity which severely restricts the attention they can pay to the road? Would it be that unreasonable to craft a law which makes this possible?
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I don't think the US legal system has the flexibility for the 'you should have known better' style of laws. There seems to be a very high emphasis on the letter of the law.
Spyder wrote:I don't think the US legal system has the flexibility for the 'you should have known better' style of laws. There seems to be a very high emphasis on the letter of the law.
Only because we're a nation of technicality-exploiting litigious loopholers. As soon as people started getting arrested under DW's proposed law, there'd be appeals up the wazoo, "I didn't know that reading a magazine would be distracting!" and so on.
Not that I think that's a good thing. On the contrary, I think that the US population learning that they have to exercise judgment would be a very good thing.
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