Monday, November 30, 2009

Texting while driving = ticket in CO starting tomorrow

The law that started in California finally arrives in Colorado starting tomorrow: it is a primary offense to be caught texting while driving, punishable by a $50 fine.

A few items of note:
  • You can also get a ticket for texting while sitting at a light.
  • "Texting" includes e-mail, Facebook, etc. -- anything that requires you to type on the keyboard.
  • "Primary offense" means that you can be pulled over for suspicion of texting; you do not have to have committed another violation.
  • This law does not include using a handsfree device to make voice calls (unlike California, but I'm sure that's coming too).
  • Unfortunately there does not appear to be a good voice-to-text application for the iPhone -- most require a carrier assignment and use the e-mail gateway; ShoutOUT looks promising, but does not yet appear to actually be available.
I watched a cop get interviewed about this on the news this morning and he admitted that it would be difficult in a compressed time period to tell if you were dialing a number vs. texting, but that if there were a reasonable time period in which he was following you, he would probably be able to tell.

Guess I'll actually have to start using the traditional phone function of my iPhone.

2 comments:

John Rob said...

Whenever a text message is received drivesafe.ly application responds with auto responder message immediately. It helps me to concentrate on my I work without any distraction.

Tyrone said...

This additionally is about safety and yet with the high technology's approach to enhance the use of gadget while doing another thing, it should still be not an excuse as your mindset will always be focused on the messaging and not with the driving. What pays then is to prevent rather than to cure the accident.