Stricter Ohio distracted driving law now in effect
Hear from those who will be enforcing this new law, along with citizens for their opinions on distracted driving
On October 30th a new distracted driving law went into effect in the State of Ohio. The law now allows officers to issue an additional $100 fine to a person they pull over, if they can prove the operator was distracted.
House Bill 95 will help officers be able to ticket drivers for being distracted while they were driving, most commonly by a cell phone, but could be due to other factors such as applying makeup.
However, the law in Ohio for texting and driving is that it is still a secondary offense. This means an officer could see you drive by while you are on your cell phone, but if you are not committing a primary offense, such as speeding or veering into the other lane, they may not pull you over.
The goal of this law is to improve the overall safety for driver’s in the state and attempt to decrease the amount of accidents and fatalities due to distracted driving.
This raises the question: Will this law help to deter drivers from texting while driving, or do we need stricter laws, such as making texting and driving a primary offense, to make roads safer?
According to the Ohio Department of Public Safety In 2017, 13,997 drivers in Ohio were involved in a crash due to being distracted by something. 51% were fatal which resulted in 55 deaths throughout the state. Another 4,668 drivers were involved in accidents due to some form of distracted driving, resulting in 6,988 injuries.
In addition, 25% of the accidents reported, or about 3,500, were said to have bee a result of a driving texting while driving.
Despite the addition of House Bill 95 Officer Michael Lewis of the Kent Police Department doesn’t believe officers have enough power to combat texting and driving in the State.
Lewis says, “As far as the state is concerned it is not yet a primary offense or a primary violation and police officers still don’t have the power to really crack down on texting and driving like we need to.”
In the neighboring state of Michigan, texting and driving is a primary offense and in 2017 the state saw 2,146 accidents as a result of texting and driving, according to the annual crash statistics on the Michigan State Police website.
Some communities within the state of Ohio have taken this step as they can decide to make texting while driving a primary offense in their community.
Officer TJ Ford of the Cuyahoga Falls Police Department spoke about how some people think sending just a little text isn’t a big issue because it’s quick. He described how this isn’t the case.
Ford says, “There was a stat if you’re doing 55 miles per hour the average text message response takes 5 seconds. You just traveled a whole football field. For one little text message ‘on my way!’.”
Lauren Smith knows how quickly a distracted driver can cause an accident. Smith was a driver for Uber in the Northeast Ohio area, but on one such occasion she was a passenger in an Uber while vacationing in Vegas when her driver, who was distracted by his cell phone, caused an accident.
“We only made it about 3 quarters of a mile, uh, before he ran a red light and t-boned another car because he was messing with the app while he was driving.” Smith recalls.
Officer Ford believes accidents, such as Lauren’s experience or worse, could be one of the only ways Ohio pushes texting and driving to become a primary offense, though he hopes it can be changed before something like that occurs.
“Something major happens and then, you know, we’re always behind the eight ball, you know, why can’t we get it going before somebody gets seriously hurt or killed.” Ford says.
Officer Lewis echoed this sentiment and he believes the state has enough evidence to make texting and driving a primary offense now.
“I think that the distracted driving is so bad that they can justify making it a primary violation and a police officer should have the authority to stop you and issue you a citation based solely on witnessing that.”
Lewis elaborated on House Bill 95 and if he thinks it will be effective in stopping citizens from texting while driving.
“House Bill 95 may have had the best of intentions, but I think it is going to fall short because it still does not give us the power we need.”
A new distracted driving law is now in effect in Ohio, but how effective will it be? Look here for 2017 distracted driving incident stats in Ohio. https://t.co/oSSjdOE98I
— ReporterJoe (@ReporterJoe2) November 14, 2018
