Fair enough. How about if I amend that to, “either take your medicine or file an appeal.”
Any law that requires “use” of a thing as an element of a violation should be interpreted to prohibit mere possession of that thing? Phooey!
California is a cesspool in a huge amount of debt without any financial restraint or scaling back of government or taxes in sight. And you unfairly got caught in the crosshairs.
As my SO said, “the hand-free law isn’t going to stop tools who always talk on their cell phones distractedly, it’s just going to catch law-abiding citizens who accidentally are handling their phones”.
And that’s exactly what it did.
As a tip, I’ve started driving pretty much everywhere with my earpiece in my ear. So long as you have a little foam cover on the earbud, it’s comfy, and it allows me to talk without distraction.
Hands free devices do not diminish the distraction.
If I actually do have my phone while driving, it’s hooked up to an auxiliary jack in my car-- I also use my phone as an MP3 player sometimes, so this is how it stays. If I make a call, it’s automatically hands free by proxy of this lil set up.
Yet it’s all the current law requires.
Distractions like other cars, pedestrians, and traffic lights interfering with your conversations?
Yeah, or obnoxious little kids “playing” in the “residential streets” or walking in “cross walks” in “school zones”. Little fuckers.
You know that’s not how she meant that. Calm down.
So what? Lindsaybluth said the hands free device allows her to “talk without distraction” while she’s driving. No it doesn’t. The law is neither here nor here.
Well, it is sort of both here and there, as the law is the basis for not only rules and regulations of this fine land of ours, but also justice.
Again: if there’s a problem with any phone while driving, why isn’t that the law? Like I said, my problem is with the wording of the current law, not with the idea behind it. Sounds like you have a problem with the current law’s wording, too, Dio.
Not that I think people should use cell phones while driving (I don’t), but how are they more distracting than, say, a screaming toddler in the back or a boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/spouse arguing or debating with you in the passenger seat?
It’s no different than if you go through a green light and the officer says it was red. Who will the judge believe? The cop.
Look we all get tickets. The only way to avoid this is not to use a cell phone when you drive, hands free or not. Just stick it in the glove box and only use it in emergencies.
Now I know what you’re thinking, but the OP was innocent. That may very well be, but let’s be fair. How many times have you run a red light or used a cell phone and not gotten caught. Do you run and turn yourself in? Of course not.
If you’re going to gripe about getting a ticket for something you didn’t do, fair enough but also make sure you gripe about all the times you broke the law and didn’t get one.
Funny when you look at it like that it seems different 
We all get tickets deserved or not, so in the future you can solve this problem 100% by not using the cell phone. And if you feel you’re so important that you can’t be without it, then the ticket, well deserved or not, will be worth the extra cost to you.
The screaming toddler wouldn’t be of much help, but an adult passenger could possibly warn you of some kind of impeding danger on the road ahead. The person on the other end of a cellphone conversation is incapable of any such assesment of your immediate surroundings.
Your SO is a drooling idiot.
Yes, in this particular case, we seem to have a situation where someone has unfortunately been dinged for simply handling the equipment, but this does not in any way suggest that “tools who always talk on their cellphone distractedly” will not also be caught.
For me, the OP is actually talking about two essentially unrelated issues:
- the issue of how to defend oneself when one was not actually using the phone,
and
- the question of higher fines for using a cellphone while driving.
I think that it would be nice if there were a way for genuinely innocent people to demonstrate their innocence to the satisfaction of a judge. I’m not exactly sure how that might be done; perhaps one method might be to have the police officer record the serial number and/or phone number of the cellphone in question when the traffic stop is made. That way, presenting a bill showing that you were not using that particular phone at the time might get you out of the jam
Of course, any defense relying on technology like this can always be fudged somehow. For example what if you swap out SIM cards (or whatever they’re called), so that one phone effectively becomes a different phone?
It seems to me that this sort of infraction is always going to boil down to your word versus the officer’s.
But, for me, this whole issue is quite separate from the issue of fines. I support raising the fine for a first offense to $50, and i also support the idea that the infraction should cost you a point on your license.
Well, there have been innumerable studies of distracted driving, and most of them suggest that a cellphone conversation (even on a hands-free device) is qualitatively different than the types of distraction your are talking about here.
For example, while at first glance a cellphone conversation seems very similar to having a conversation with the person sitting in the passenger seat, many studies suggest that the driver is far more likely to become distracted during the phone conversation. One reason offered is that, because the passenger is in the car with you, and can see what you see, they will understand if a change in traffic conditions requires you to temporarily halt the conversation in order to focus on your driving.
Admittedly, some other studies do suggest that passenger conversations can be just as distracting as cellphone conversations. Even if that were the case, though, from a purely practical standpoint, there’s going to be no political traction whatsoever in regulating conversations between drivers and passengers.
If you want more info comparing cellphone and passenger conversations, start with this Wiki entry, and check out the footntoes.
Ah yes, when cellphones are outlawed only outlaws will have cellphones.
As a pedestrian who almost gets run over pretty much every day by distracted drivers on cellphones, I have to say I don’t think handsfree helps at all. I watch where I’m going and only cross at crosswalks, but still I have had near misses with people backing out of driveways, turning onto sidestreets without slowing down at all (just yesterday someone turning right from the left hand lane without signalling), and running through red lights or flashing orange crosswalk lights. I know everyone thinks they are an above average driver, but obviously a lot of people are not capable of talking and driving.
Unless the judge is a former professor of yours! Only traffic ticket protest where I’ve gotten a fair shake.
But it’s great that everyone’s hackles are out, especially Diogenes’s. Doesn’t take much to get him into an absolute tizzy, does it? You’re just always on the warpath, man. Chill out.
We can hope, but it’s a lost cause.
Comments like this aren’t called for in this forum. Please tone down the personal stuff.
Understood.
The law was irrelevant to that particular post. I was simply stating the fact that hands free devices do not diminish the distraction from or impairment of driving.
The only time I hear about someone winning in Traffic Court is when the officer fails to show up. After that, it seems that officer > defendant.
As for the Dio Digression, he has a point that simply using the phone to talk can be a problem. However, I would love to know what a conversation with someone in the car can do to you. What is the impact of kids. How bad is it to drink my coffee. What happens when lighting a cigarette. There are a ton of distractions that we allow, rather than go down the path of legality of all of them. At some point we have to accept that very few people are at 100% in the car. This is captured in the data about how many people drive impaired or under the influence and get home safely every single day.
If we were to really go after it all:
Car Design:
No radios.
Single passenger vehicles only
No cell phones.
To start the car:
Breath test for booze, etc.
Some sort of a sleep test (checks if you have had your 8 hours)
Blood sugar test
There were quite literally over 100 people there. My officer was the only one who showed up. Lucky me