Hi Will …
Thanks for the email with links to the new cellphone / texting law.
Do you have any idea why the ban on texting extends to vehicles stopped in traffic? Most of it seems fine but this part seems overreaching to me — unless we are also going to prohibit all of the other interesting and distracting things people do while stopped in traffic. Reading maps, for the most obvious example, is as distracting from what’s happening around you as texting, but is perfectly legal.
Thanks,
Tom
Fair question. Wondered about that myself. My thinking in accepting it was that “stopped in traffic” is a relative term, so it would be impossible to enforce. Also, a person could cause an accident by failing to realize that the traffic around them had started to move again.
Oh I think you could enforce it by defining it. And I suspect the police will not be spending their time staking out lines of stopped traffic to look for texting motorists!
The part about causing an accident I understand, but it applies to many other activities too.
Anyway I doubt it is worth a lot of energy, I was just curious.
Thanks,
Tom