June 28, 2004
Attention motor-mouths: effective July 1, you can be fined $100 or more for holding a cell phone while driving in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey. New York has had a similar law since 2001.
The New Jersey fine can climb as high as $250 if there are aggravating circumstances, but Garden State police say they won't actually pull motorists over for driving and gabbing unless there's another infraction -- like expired plates or reckless driving.
New York and Washington, D.C., police can stop motorists simply for driving and chatting and D.C. police say they'll do so, at least for the first few weeks the new law's in effect.
Critics say the new laws won't have much effect.
The critics include the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), the organization that represents state highway safety agencies. It is discouraging other states from passing hand- held cell phone legislation.
The association says hand-held cell phone bans send the wrong message to drivers -- giving them a false sense of safety by implying that it's safe to use hands-free cell phones while driving. The association says any distraction is a safety hazard.
Research conducted for AAA by the University of North Carolina last year indicated that reading and writing, eating, adjusting the radio, interacting with others in the car and grooming, as well as cell phone use, were major distractions.
Employing in-car video cameras to observe how drivers behave, the study concluded that all drivers in the study had been distracted to some degree, 90 percent by something outside the car and 100 percent by something inside the car.
"The AAA research reaffirms that cell phones are the distraction that drivers love to hate, but in fact they are just one of many that drivers encounter on a daily basis. Anything that takes a driver's attention away from the task at hand can be potentially fatal, said Kathryn Swanson, Chair of GHSA.
The Yankee Group, a Boston-based communications and networking research and consulting company, estimates that about 44 percent of all adult cell phone usage in 2003 was done in a vehicle.
