I went on a lot of ride alongs, with my cop neighbor. The irony is, before a cop pulls you over, for any reason, including talking on or holding a wireless cell, the cop uses his shoulder mounted, or hard wired hand held radio to run a 10-28 on your plates.
Even in a high speed pursuit, cops are driving with one hand on the wheel, the other hand calling in coordinates to dispatch.
A clever person could use this in court. How is a cop any less dangerous holding a radio trans / recvr, than a civilian at a stop light? ESP in a high speed pursuit, while executing a pit manuever Just ask the cop if he ran a 28 on you (guarantee he did) the ask him how he was able to do so.
Key point…there are no exceptions on this law, as written.
Even worse, the police now have laptops mounted on the center armrest. Dispatch keys in info on a call, and the cop is actually reading the laptop while driving / responding. And if it’s an urgent call, they are driving like bats outta hell while reading the laptop.
Actually, the procedure for a cop to pull over a person talking or holding a cell, is to radio in your plates, year and make and color of car, occupied x times, location and reason. Then dispatch emails back the 10-28 ( your bio ) to his laptop, that he then reads…all while driving.
I don’t know how much bearing this has on the law, but as a matter of common sense, I am very strongly of the opinion that when any motor vehicle of any kind is either in motion, or in a state that it reasonably could go into motion, that there needs to be a driver at the controls whose attention is on the safe operation of that vehicle, and on the conditions around that vehicle, and not on his cell phone.
Even stopped at a red light, the light could change at any moment, and the driver needs to be paying attention to that.
I have no sympathy at all for the OP, and I hope he has to pay the full fine. Maybe next time, he’ll pay attention to his driving, instead of to his phone.
A clever person would realize that this has probably been tried a thousand times before.
I dunno. I’d like to see this line of logic applied to other criminal situations. “Sure, I kidnapped that woman and held her against her will - but is that really any different than what the cops did when they arrested me?”
Yes, the classic “no u” defense, always guaranteed to work.
That’s not a proper analogy. In the example given, the officer is using a communication device while driving. If he kidnapped someone and forced them to give out a ticket that would be a proper analogy.
A regular occurrence in my area are police officers running stop signs and stop lights without a care in the world.
The real question is: how did Muffin manage to post (excessively) before his/her join date?
SDMB is having server errors. Server errors tend to cause things like that. Just remember, computers have all the intelligence of warm apple pie, and can’t be expected to notice what you notice.
Try refreshing and see if it goes away.
I know this thread is a semi-zombie, but I’m curious how this sort of thing is being handled in the modern smart phone world. I know more than a few people who mount their phone on the dash to use as a gps while driving. How do you tell the difference between a Garmin GPS and a Samsung Galaxy that’s mounted on the dash when the car is driving by you?
Or, remarkably, we give some people particular powers and leeway, to act outside of the law that applies to others precisely so that they can carry out their duties. For example, I’m not allowed to drive at over 70mph anywhere, or 30mph in towns and cities. Police, Fire and Ambulance services regularly exceed these limits, sometimes quite dramatically but for some unknown reason they are not stopped, fined or disqualified. I wonder why.
Not remarkably, that doesn’t apply to non-emergency events yet it’s done everyday.
Maybe you’ll be lucky and not broadsided by a member of one of these agencies. Maybe not. I recently had an officer run a stop sign right in front of my house and it was sheer luck on my part that I had slowed down enough to avoid it.
What, you’re from the UK but don’t know what a Time Lord is?
In the jurisdiction being discussed, an otherwise hand-held cell phone or an otherwise hand-held GPS must not be operated while being held in the driver’s hand while he or she is driving. Either can be used legally by the driver while driving if it is mounted to the vehicle and only used with voice commands other than to simply turn it on or off.
BTW, in the jurisdiction being discussed, the same law applies to hand-held MP3 players.
I get the whole argument that it’s different than using a phone. If I were you I would just go ahead and pay it, I don’t think there is a good chance that the judge will go along with that however because then everyone caught with a cell phone could claim they were “only looking”. So many people try to get away with it, that if you need to do anything including just looking at a phone, its better to wait to pull over somewhere safe and park, before doing so. In 2007 I narrowly escaped being seriously hurt or killed in a bad accident that crumpled up the hood of my car like an accordion, because I decided to take a quick peek at my phone. Lesson learned.
How about certain loss in accordance with two decisions released by the Ontario Court of Appeal yesterday?
Are you still waiting for your case to be heard, or is it already completed, and if so, what was the result?
Last night I drove through a safety check point. It was a holiday weekend (memorial day) and they were looking for drunk drivers. The check point I believe had a officer that was a head of the check point and that 1st officer was telling the check point whom to pull over if I was to guess. I get pulled over thinking I have no worries. I had insurance, license, not been drinking and so on. They tell me that I had been using a cell phone while driving. I have a blue tooth in my car and my 6 year old son in the back seat. My son was talking to his mommy in the back seat and once he hung up the phone he said “daddy here is your phone.” I take my phone and threw it on my passenger seat. Did I really break the law here. I didnt take 1 second off the road! I was looking at the road and took my hand while paying attention to the road and put my hand toward him and he laid the phone on my hand and then I threw it to the passenger seat as mentioned. First of all I am almost 100% positive that they cannot prove a thing and when they pulled me over and said that I was on the phone that I grabbed my blue tooth and showed them it and said why would I be using the phone. My ticket even says on it “driver has hands free devise, but was holding his phone.” It was dark and I am almost certain that they had me pulled over because they could see the cell phone light up the car and that is it. Whats your opinions here. Thanks for your time. 
Quadruple Zombie threads don’t use cell phones
Pretty sure the OP isn’t coming back to congratulate you. Also your case is very different than the OP’s in that in Toronto, it is illegal to even hold a cell phone while driving.