Fighting a ticket about holding a cell phone

In My Humble Opinion
101

So should you get a ticket for looking at a piece of paper with a address on it?

It ridiculous to say that looking at a phone is using it. Everyone has looked at an address, time on the clock, looked for something in their car. Using it would be dialing, talking, texting, physically using the phone…not looking at it.

Hell! Why not give tickets for changing the stereo station! Looking at yourself in the mirror to see if you have something on your face! Where does it end? Bottom line hold people accountable for their actions do not put more laws in place for the good drivers.

102

Oh, I dunno. I might make an exception in your case.

Um, I thought that’s what the law was doing, holding the bad drivers to account for their actions.

103

The OP claims she was not “driving” while stopped at a light.If you are at the controls of a vehicle in the traffic lanes of a roadway, moving or not, you ARE supposed to still be driving. While that light is red you should be be keeping track of the traffic light cycle so you are not surprised when the light changes. You should be monitoring pedestrian and cross traffic, so you don’t have an accident because you started forward when the light turns green without checking these things first. You should take the opportunity to scan your engine gauges for stuff that only shows up at idle, like low oil pressure. You should be aware of what is going on around you so the carjacker doesn’t catch you by surprise. You might even notice the cop next to you before you blatantly break the law.

That is what DRIVERS do when they are stopped. Unfortunately, among people who operate vehicles on our roadways, actual drivers are quite rare.

104

Yeah, you deserved the ticket, suck it up. Actually, almost exactly the same thing happened to me except I was stopped in a traffic jam and picked up the phone to check a voicemail that had come in from the client I was travelling to visit - I was concerned that he might be calling to cancel. And I saw the cop see me and pulled right over, she didn’t have to say a word. And it was an expensive ticket almost $200.

105

Note: This is a 2 year old thread.

I wonder how Galileo’s court date went.

106

This is exactly why these types of laws are horseshit. They are written and enforced in ham-fisted ways. Simply HOLDING a phone is illegal? As others have said, that is absurd because I am allowed to hold virtually any other object in my hand while driving including maps and books.

The anti-texting law goes into effect here on July 1 and NOBODY I talk to realizes that you can’t even check your messages at a red light, even though it’s right there in the law. I can understand the dangers of texting while driving down the road at 70mph in traffic, but not while stopped.

107

Update: My wife is going to court next week for another three traffic tickets (speeding, missing registration, and something else). We’ll see if she can make it 6 for 6.

108

So today, 9 months after I received a ticket for ‘allegedly’ talking on my cell phone and driving, I went to court…for the 3rd time. The previous times the court ran out of time and my trial was re-scheduled.

Over those 3 visits, I witnessed numerous people being offered a reduced fine of $50 to plead ‘guilty’. I would not do that, because unlike all the people below, I actually pulled off the main road onto a side street, parked, took a call from my daughter which lasted :30 seconds (she locked herself out of the house), ended the call, did a 3 point turn on the side street and got back on the main road again.

While on the call I watched a police car that was parked on the opposite side of the road facing me. He did nothing, and I wasn’t nervous about him being there because I had pulled over. About 5 minutes later I hear a siren behind me and pull to the side to let him pass but he’s pulling me over" . He asked if I knew why to which I replied “no” and he said because I was talking on my phone while driving. I said no I wasn’t, and he persisted. I then said, "Do you mean back about a mile when I pulled onto a side street to take a call from my daughter? He shrugged and walked back to the car and wrote me a ticket.

For my day in court I had a map of where I’d pulled off to take the call and where the cop had pulled me over, and I had a copy of the cell phone bill to show that I had indeed taken a call at 9:35 that lasted less than a minute and the time on the ticket which was 5 minutes later. I am absolutely against cell phone use while driving which is why I pulled over, and I took this to court to prove to my kids that I practice what I preach
.
Long story short, an officer got up on the stand (not the one who actually pulled me over so I guess he was a second officer in the car at the time), and told the court that he saw me on my cell phone driving north, then stopped with my blinker on and then proceeded to make a U-turn and continue driving southbound again.

I couldn’t believe it! A blatant lie and the judge said basically it was my word against his and I had no evidence that proved to the contrary.

I have never been so upset - I haven’t cried in many years but I sobbed all the way home today. To watch someone who is in law and justice blatantly lie and there’s not a damn think you can do about it has upset me to no end.
Lesson learned, next time just plead guilty, save yourself 3 days of taking off work and about $150. Sorry for wasting your money fellow taxpayers!

The kicker is a lawyer afterward came up to me and said I’m not the first one this has happened to. And a friend of ours who is a judge herself told me the same thing tonight at dinner. Really? What rock have I been living under?

I don’t know but it’s 4 am and I still can’t sleep. I still see that officer on the stand with his hand on the bible just telling a complete fabrication and the judge saying its an issue of credibility and basically I have none.
Wow!

109

Sucks. Yet another datapoint for folks who think that they will receive justice as the result of court proceedings. Never a good thing when you have to be in a court, because the worst case scenario is always in play, and things are never in your control. Hopefully there are more honest cops than the asshole n your case.

110

Cops are people.

People are utter shit.

Ergo cops are utter shit.

111

That really sucks. If it were just you there wouldn’t be much you could do, but maybe if you posted this somewhere, or contacted your local paper, they can find enough people who the cops screwed to make a good story.

112

For the “stopped at a red light” part, I think you’re considered to be driving at that point, in the sense of “in control of a motor vehicle”. You’re still supposed to be able to react to what goes on around you, and (in most cases) the only thing keeping your car from moving and causing harm is your foot on the brake pedal, clutch, or both.

Given your circumstances, I wouldn’t have given you the ticket. But I don’t think you have much of a legal argument. (IANAL)

ETA: This was directed at the OP, not at csharpfox.

113

Since the OP hasn’t been here since December, 2011, and the original incident took place over three years ago, I doubt he’ll read it.

114

By the way, my wife had to pay her speeding ticket from last year, so her perfect streak with Toronto traffic court was ruined. And then she got dinged for not pulling over for a police car and she took a plea bargain for that ticket.

csharpfox, did they send you dashboard camera footage to look over?

115

Both officers need to be there-if only one was then she (?) should have filed for dismissal on those grounds alone.

116

It sounds like your daughter called you, you answered the call, and then proceeded to pull over to finish the call. If so, guilty as charged.

117

And just to be specific, the law forbids even HOLDING a phone while driving (as noted in the original post). So someone could be guilty even if he or she didn’t answer the phone until stopped.

118

It does in the UK - In a recent case a driver was given a fixed penalty for using her phone while driving through a supermarket car park.

119

While I realize that laws sometimes have to be rigid to be enforceable, I’m a little surprised that so many posters seem to feel that glancing at your cell phone at a red light is actually dangerous driving. If you’re on a heavy-traffic street and each of the last red lights have been >30 secs, I find it hard to understand why looking at your cell phone in the first 15 secs of the red light is somehow dangerous driving.

I was driving through Times Square, where the red lights are LONG, and a police officer pulled me over for looking at my cell phone while at a red light. I wish I had read this thread before the incident, because I was so confused about what exactly I supposedly did wrong that I almost got the book thrown at me. The officer started by saying that I was “on the phone” while driving, and I responded that I wasn’t on the phone (which, to me, means on a phone call), just looking at the GPS display to see how far I had to go. The officer then hit the roof that I was lying to an office of the law by saying I wasn’t on the phone when she saw me on the phone. If I had known the law was interpreting a glance at GPS as a traffic violation, I would have kept my mouth shut.

120

I only read the OP, but Galileo it seems you have some decent extenuating circumstances that you can argue your case like you did in the OP to the judge. Based on what you shared (disclosed) in the OP, while you clearly violated the letter of the law you may not have violated the spirit of the law. You may even try fighting the ticket by mail if that’s an available option.

Not sure if this had already been mentioned but “mail” is not in this thread in this context.

IANAL - just my civilian opinion here.