Although more and more states are making it illegal to text while driving, few drivers are following that law. I know that whenever I’m driving, I see people using their smartphones all the time. And when a car is swerving and going slower than normal, you can rest assured the driver is looking at their phone instead of the road – and should be punished as the law describes.
Because distracted driving is about as dangerous as drunk driving, police officers are doing what they can to crack down on the dangerous habit. But it’s cops in Atlanta, Georgia who are taking a creative approach to their duties. Recently, a gang of cops went undercover as construction workers to see if they could catch people in the act of texting while driving – and the result was amazing.
In just three hours of undercover work, police officers handed out more than 60 tickets in Cobb County. All the cops had to do was dress like construction workers, and they caught people breaking the law like it was nobody’s business.
“They’re looking for direct violations. So, this can be someone texting on their phone or people playing on social media,” spokesperson Sydney Melton form the Cobb County Police Department said.
Police have seen so many accidents and fatalities all because people are using their phones while driving.
Melton added, “The phone mounted on your dash or windshield, that’s okay. In your hand is not okay.”
Although Georgia State Patrol issued nearly 25,000 tickets during the first year of the Hands-Free Law, these fines have done little to deter people from using their phones while driving.
The first ticket comes with a $50 fine. Seconds offenders get fined $100 while a third time comes with a $150 fee.
“The phone doesn’t need to be in your hand,” Melton told CBS Atlanta affiliate WGCL. “We want people focused one-hundred percent on the roadway.”
Local residents have mixed reactions with the undercover police tactics. One person called it “sneaky and clever.”
Another person said, “No one likes to be kind of snuck up upon, but hopefully people realize safety is paramount.”
Distracted driving killed 3,450 people in the United States in 2016, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those numbers are projected to increase as more people get hooked on their smartphones and use them while driving. It is up to local police and state police departments to crack down on distracting driving and issue tickets to help save lives.
Distracted driving is an extremely dangerous offense. When people look down at their phone, they can be distracted from the road for seconds. And if you’re traveling at 60 miles per hour, you miss 88 feet of road travel every second.
When you look down at your phone to read a text that only takes four seconds of your time, you miss more than 350 feet of travel – that’s longer than the entire length of a football field if you’re only traveling 60 miles per hour.
Do you think cities should hire more police officers to enforce traffic safety?
