Texting, Talking While Driving Crackdown Begins

Driving while texting? Holding a cell phone to your ear or have it on speaker phone in one hand? 

Get $250 ready for your first ticket. Or better yet, make a pact with your family you won't endanger yourself or others that way again.

Beginning Monday, more than 200 police agencies across the state will take part in a monthlong crackdown on distracted driving.

As part of April’s Distracted Driving Awareness Month campaign, the Pacifica Police Department will be actively ticketing those texting or operating hand-held cell phones during the entire month. Drivers who break the law and place themselves and others in danger will be cited with no warnings, according to the Pacifica Police. The current minimum ticket cost is $159, with subsequent tickets costing at least $279.

Last April, over 57,000 tickets were written statewide for texting and hand-held cell use. There were nearly 450,000 convictions in 2012. Nationally, an estimated 3,331 died in 2011. Whether it’s a ticket or a crash, as the campaign theme states, “It’s Not Worth It!”

“We all know that talking on our cell phones while driving is distracting, but that doesn’t stop some people from continuing to do it,” said Pacifica Police Chief Jim Tasa. “This effort is intended to educate our community about the dangers of cell phone use while driving. We hope that once people see the statistics and realize the danger involved, they will change their driving habits to help protect themselves, their families, and others on the road.”

Gary Richard, aka Mr. Roadshow in the San Jose Mercury News devoted an entire column to the distracted driving question and this month's crackdown. He cited a 2006 study by University of Utah researchers that concluded that talking on a hands-free or handheld cellphone leaves a driver as impaired as drinking.

Visit the National Safety Council's website and you can read a lot about the reason why: Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. Younger, inexperienced drivers under 20 years old have the highest proportion of distraction-related fatal crashes.

In addition, studies show that texting while driving can delay a driver’s reaction time just as severely as having a blood alcohol content of a legally drunk driver. Studies also show that there is no difference in the risks between hands-free and hand-held cell phone conversations, both of which can result in “inattention blindness” which occurs when the brain isn’t seeing what is clearly visible because the drivers’ focus is on the phone conversation and not on the road. When over one third of your brain’s functioning that should be on your driving moves over to cell phone talking, you can become a cell phone “zombie.”

To avoid a distracted driving ticket or crash, the Pacifica Police Department offers drivers the following tips:

• Turn off your phone and/or put it out of reach while driving

• Include in your outgoing message that you can’t answer while you are driving

• Don’t call or text anyone at a time when you think they may be driving

For more information on distracted driving awareness click on the California Office of Traffic Safety.

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