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Georgia Cop Issues 800 Tickets To Drivers Texting At Red Lights
McGruber writes "WSB-Television, Atlanta, tells us that Gwinnett County police officer Jessie Myers has issued more tickets for texting and driving than any other officer in the state. Officer Myers said he sees most people typing away on their phones while waiting at red lights. 'Most people think they're safe there,' Myers said. However, he said it's still illegal. 'At a red light, you're still driving, according to the law. You're on a roadway, behind (the wheel of) a car, in charge of it, with a vehicle in drive,' Myers said. Myers also tickets drivers using navigation apps. One driver said she was just using her phone's GPS. The law forbids that and Myers issued her a ticket. "That's right. You can't use your navigation while driving. Unless it is a GPS-only device, such as Garmin or Tom Tom, something that is not used as a communication device,' Myers said."
Which is why I always put my car in [P]ark while stopped at traffic lights.
(I live in Cobb County, 2 counties over from Gwinnett and have received a ticket for "texting while driving")
You're not legally driving if your car is in park.
And I beat the ticket by forcing the cop to produce the dashcam footage. You could clearly see my reverse lights light up as the car was shifted from Park to Drive.
In fact, having a car in Park is one of the few exceptions written into the law.
This type of enforcement is making it "safer" for the texters to do it while driving ... harder for this asshat to catch them.
Dammit, that's a good point. I always forget about unintended consequences. Ugh!
we've been handing out driver's licences like crackerjack toys for decades, so we've got complete and total morons behind the wheels of cars.
Sure, but if you're going to make it harder to get a license you also need to give people other options for getting around. I live in Vancouver. A few weeks ago I was talking to a woman from Omaha who had moved to suburban Vancouver and she was amazed that she didn't really need a car. She could do everything she needed to do on public transit, with the occasional taxi thrown into the mix. In Omaha that wasn't possible - You simply needed to have a car (or so she said). So if you're going to make it harder to get a license (and by extension take some people off the road) you need to concurrently fund public transit.
Seriously? As an honest reply to this (okay, I admit, I just got trolled) traffic cops are there for several reasons.
A) Revenue collection. I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that up front.
B) Keeping traffic close to speed limits. Yeah, the definition of "close" varies from cop to cop, and that makes it hard for a driver to drive with a lot of confidence of just how fast you can drive without getting a ticket. I hate that. I'd like an up front admission of "The speed limit is 70, but we won't ticket anyone doing under 82 unless they are otherwise driving unsafely". We'll never see that. Besides, "driving unsafely" is hard to define, but it's easy to give the guy changing lanes unsafely a speeding ticket, and it punishes unsafe behavior about as well (which means, not very) as a reckless driving ticket does, but it takes less to defend in court.
C) Being nearby when there is an accident. A nearby traffic cop is a first-responder for a traffic accident, and that job saves lives. They also do care-and-comfort during and after accidents. You look in any highway patrolman's trunk, and you'll find a teddy bear to be given to the little kid that survived a traffic accident (whose parent maybe didn't).
Most good traffic cops (and almost all Highway Patrol) regard speeding tickets as a way to get traffic to slow down so when there is an accident, there will be fewer deaths. In their job, it's always "when" and not "if" there is an accident. Energy is mass times velocity squared, remember.
Doing A lets the state pay for more cops to be around for C. Can't really tell you if I like that trade-off or not.
And yeah, none of this stops me from being pissed when I get a speeding ticket. Don't they have something better to do than bug me when I'm not hurting anyone?!?! ;)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Georgia law(O.C.G.A., or Original Code of Georgia Annotated; O.C.G.A. 40-8-91 (a)) requires that law enforcement vehicles used to enforce traffic laws be marked with, at the very least, four inch block lettering on the driver and passenger side, indicating the agency that operates the vehicle, and lettering on the deck lid(trunk) indicating the same. All other law enforcement vehicles, namely "unmarked" vehicles, are prohibited from initiating traffic stops, save for true exigent circumstances. Sadly, there are a few states that allow or tolerate unmarked law enforcement vehicle enforcement traffic law.
Virginia was the worst, from what I witnessed on my trips between Georgia and Washington, D.C. There were many areas where multiple "unmarked"(no agency markings, or any markings, and no lights mounted outside of the vehicle) vehicles were lined up, waiting to initiate stops for what seemed like every 10 miles, or so. That is inviting major risk where it can be easily avoided.
I do have a serious problem with some of the actions of the officer discussed in the aforementioned article. O.C.G.A. 40-6-241.2 doesn't broadly cover "operating a motor vehicle", unlike other O.C.G.A. Title 40 laws do. If a driver is at a point of rest, even with a motor vehicle that has its motor in active operation and the vehicle's transmission is set in a gear that allows for forward or rearward locomotion, there is no legitimate reason to cite said driver for operating a mobile phone, or other device not exempted by 40-6-241.2("...citizens band radios, citizens band radio hybrids, commercial two-way radio communication devices, subscription based emergency communications, in-vehicle security, navigation devices, and remote diagnostics systems, or amateur or ham radio devices."). Once the vehicle is in motion, the driver would be in violation of O.C.G.A. 40-6-241.2(unless the driver is one of the "special people" exempted by that law.
I am an ex-law enforcement officer in the State of Georgia. I arrested more than a few people for DUI without the vehicle being in motion during any of the time I, or any other law enforcement officer observed the violation(most traffic violations have to be observed by a law enforcement officer in order to stop and/or cite for the offense). So, I understand the distinction between driving, in the practical sense, and the legal view of being in control of a motor vehicle. This law isn't as broad as the officer believes it to be.