Using Handheld Phone GPS While Driving Is Legal In California

jfruh writes "Steven R. Spriggs was ticketed and fined $165 for violating California's law on cell phone use while operating a motor vehicle, which states that you can only use a phone while driving if you have a hands-free device. But he appealed the judgement, arguing that the law only applied to actually talking on the phone, whereas he had been caught checking his GPS app. Now an appeals court has agreed with him. The law in question was enacted in 2006, before the smartphone boom."

Comments

Re:Yes, that's obviously safer

[StatureOfLiberty]

Looking at the screen and interacting with it is obviously safer than holding the phone to your ear and talking to someone. Don't be an idiot. You're operating a two ton machine at speed. Keep your eyes on the road.

Steven R. Spriggs, the appellant, held his mobile phone in his hand to use the mapping application to find his way around the congestion when STOPPED in heavy traffic

This person was not moving at the time. On top of that, if the phone had been a Garmin GPS instead of a phone the ticket would never have been issued even though the user would have been using both devices in the same way.
This kind of stuff is just stupid.

Re:Dumb ruling

[JesseMcDonald]

Even better: Make the navigation app stop responding to input whenever the phone is moving.

The phone can't distinguish between the driver using the phone while it's moving and a passenger using the phone while it's moving. I, for one, would be very annoyed if my phone stopped working whenever I was riding in someone else's car, or on public transportation. There's also the fact that this misfeature would actively prevent a passenger from assisting the driver with navigation functions.