California Teen Cell Phone Use Ban While Driving

[kandrathe]

I cut out much of your post to save space. First, let me say that I support a ban of hand held phones while driving (for all persons of driving age). I'm well aware of how driving with one hand impairs my ability to control a vehicle and a conversation splits my attention from driving. I do, however, beleieve that certain calls may be necessary, and so phone use should not be entirely banned.

With regard to defining reckless driving as inclusive of distracted driving: I am in favor of this as well, but I feel that reckless driving is a crimainal charge generally resulting from a collision with another party or some fixed object. Reckless driving may be a very good description of what teens, and others do, while driving and doing other things at the same time, but creating a specific provision banning cell phone use allows a traffic stop to occurr before a collision. I think this law is intended to function like seat-belt laws: give police an additional, lawful, cause to stop a driver who may not yet have crossed the line into recklessness.

I just fear that soon you will know people with a "rap sheet" a mile long... Filled with such things as staring at a women for more than 10 seconds, using a cell phone while driving, and watering your lawn on the wrong day of the week.

When I was young I used to street race, and from 18 until 23 or so I racked up quite a few moving violations. I'm not proud of that time, but it was my way of acting out after my parents divorce. However, during that time I never caused an accident. The first time I caused an accident was last year in fact when I rear ended someone causing no damage to their tire, but wrecking my grill and hood. It took a long time for me to get past my bad driving record, so to see more and more rules piled onto the code makes me cringe. We are legislating common sense. If someone drives with one hand on a cell phone, is swerving from lane to lane, speeding up and slowing down and not paying attention to the road they deserve a ticket. There are plenty of laws in place already for which an officer could stop them including inattentive, careless or reckless driving. The last two are misdemeanors in my State which require a court visit.