Woodinville Drivers Beware: The Cell Phone Law is Being Enforced

Driving on SR 202 (Woodinville-Redmond Road NE) or SR 9 or any other state route? Make sure your full attention is on the road, warns Washington State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste.

Washington State Troopers have handed out 6,850 tickets to drivers talking or texting on cell phones, a five-fold increase since legislators toughened the law from a secondary to a primary offense in June of 2010.

Elevation to primary meant that troopers can pull people over for cell phone violations. Previously, as a secondary offense, troopers could only cite if they observed some other violation first.

“The legislature gave us this law, and our troopers have made good use of it,” said State Patrol Chief Batiste. “We believe that distracted driving is a factor in far more collisions that we know about, and we are determined to address that.”

In the eleven months ending May 15, 2011, troopers wrote 6,850 citations to drivers who held a phone up to their ear. In the final eleven months under the secondary law, only 1.344 tickets were written.

Citations for texting also more than doubled, from 225 to 549.

“Texting is much harder for troopers to see and prove,” Batiste said. “People really need to voluntarily refrain from this very dangerous behavior.”

Troopers are using education as well as enforcement to win driver compliance. In the same eleven-month period, a total of 14,518 drivers were stopped for cell phone violations, and 1244 for texting.

Troopers decide whether to cite or warn based on totality of circumstances, and they typically cite for only about half of all violations they witness.

The State Patrol faces a challenge in determining how many collisions are caused by distracted driving generally or cell phones specifically.

In a speed or DUI related crash, investigators have physical evidence they can rely on. But a crash caused by cell phone use or texting requires self-reporting by the causing driver. Only in the most serious collisions can troopers get a search warrant to examine