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Texting While Driving Now Legal In Colorado -- In Some Cases (kdvr.com)
Fines for texting and driving in Colorado have jumped to $300, but according to the fine print, the increased fine only applies to drivers who are texting in "a careless or imprudent manner." Therefore, drivers who are texting in any other manner are still within the law. FOX31 Denver reports: Before the new legislation, any texting while driving was illegal. Tim Lane of the Colorado District Attorney's Office confirmed the softening crackdown on all texting and driving. "The simple fact is that if you are texting while driving but not being careless, it's no longer illegal," he said. What constitutes "careless" driving is up to the discretion of each individual law enforcement officer. Cellphone use of any kind is still banned for drivers younger than 18. Teens caught with a phone in hand while driving will be slapped with a $50 fine.
until the robots take the wheel
Enough said.
I live in Ontario, Canada, and we are not allowed to even hold our unpowered cellphones while stopped at a red light, let alone text on it.
Colorado is so awesome! I can smoke legal weed and then text while driving. Cool. What could possibly go wrong?
Sorry to hear that you live in a socialist nanny-state.
Our northern little brother country is cute! It's funny you pass laws and act like you matter while you're really just letting your big tough jock brother to the south cover your ass.
In my opinion any law that is that subjective should be considered unconstitutional since it can easily abused by individual law enforcement to harass those they do not like.
Suck up to the cop and maybe you'll get a pass; piss him off and you've just coincidentally committed a serious but ostensibly unrelated crime.
And unless they collect information on people "carefully and prudently" texting and driving (whatever the hell that is) we'll never know whether the law is the same for everyone... but I have a sneaking suspicion that it won't be.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I guess even the legislature likes to toke up.
What an awful idea. Might as well legalize drunk driving while not being careless.
I'd rather live in a socialist nanny state then get T-Boned by some damn fool texting his way straight through a red light.
Shucks, that nanny state might come in handy at the hospital for patching you back up after an accident like that.
In Trump country with the GOP in charge, first responders will be checking your credit rating before even bothering with expensive equipment like the jaws of life. Hell, you might not even be worth the foam to put the fire out - let it burn out on its own, haul off your dead ass together with your ruined car, send the towing bill with the collection agency after your next of kin.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Shouldn't the fine be for texters who drive in a careless or imprudent manner? As it's worded, if I took my eyes completely off the road to compose a text message, I would be carefully texting and thus not subject to the increased fine.
So which politician got caught?
So instead of having a simple concise law that can be enforced! NO texting while driving. We now have a useless law that brings in carelessness and intent.
Since it is so easy for government, lawyers and judges to interpret what someone was thinking and capable of.
I think this is just trial lawyers looking to make money when people die because of others carelessness and stupidity, but as long as the lawyers make big bucks. After all government is just what you can buy.
That is not remotely the same thing as, 'Texting while driving is legal!'. Nice millennial logic. Please all of you go away for ten years and come back when you finally grow the eff up. We are so very bored with you.
I can buy a used hydraulic rescue spreader on ebay right now for $500
Jesus Christ, hyperbole much? Trump has already been in office nearly six months, have you seen that the emergency services have stopped responding to calls? Have you seen the hospitals just turning people away en masse? Nothing of the sort is happening, I assure you.
However, the threat of fines and imprisonment is real in Canada, at least in the province of Ontario according to the OP, for holding a fucking POWERED DOWN CELL PHONE at a RED LIGHT. And somehow to you, that is preferable to having to deal with the headache of living in a free country that honestly seems to be operating just as it has always been.
I'm being serious, maybe you're just being snarky but no one is being left to die in a fire because someone you don't like got elected to be President of the United States. But the nanny-state IS real, and I for one choose to live taking the risk of being T-Boned by some moron than have the authorities breathing down my neck at every turn.
The point of having a law that bans texting while driving is to prevent accidents, not to punish people who cause accidents.
Therefore, having a law worded to ban only "careless or imprudent manner" is effectively pointless for prevention.
No idiot who is going to cause an accident will believe beforehand that they are going to do so. That is why accidents are called "accidents".
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Huh... I kinda agree. Distracted driving is statistically on par with drunk driving.
What I find curious is how they set the law up to, specifically, allow the officer to use their own discretion. I can only imagine that the legislators are smoking weed.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Is hands-free and eyes-free texting okay? Sometimes, in the car, I say, "Siri, read my text messages," and she does. And then I might say, "Siri, text Jane Doe, I'm on my way home now, be there in ten minutes, send," and she sends it.
My hands are on the wheel and my eyes are on the road 100% of the time. Is that considered "texting and driving"?
And if that's a problem, how is it different from talking on the phone via car Bluetooth? Or talking to a passenger? Or listening to the radio?
Pot solves everything man. (Except maybe increased insurance premiums.)
Socialist nanny state? Canada's nowhere near. Doesn't even have universal healthcare. If you want real socialism, you'll have to go to the EU. Just check for the countries with the lowest child poverty rates ;)
Next, let's remove all the warning labels
But seriously, will they pull over the cellphone-wielding robot driver?
Why are you holding a powered down cell phone at a red light?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
If you want real socialism, you'll have to go to the EU.
No country in the EU is anywhere close to socialism. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. Some countries in the EU are by some measures more capitalist than America. For instance, many northern EU countries have privatized their post offices. Sweden has voucherized primary education. "Social democracy" is not socialism. It is capitalism with benefits. If you want real socialism, you'll have to go to Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.
I check texts when at a red light. I do not check them barrelling 80 MPH down the freeway.
Yet California treats both cases equally. Oddly enough, I have a magazine in my car that I read while stopped at a red light. This is fine and dandy. So, um, What's This Feature?
You don't have to be a behavioral scientist or a specialist in human factors to know that people can't text and drive safely. The nature of texting means that attention WILL be diverted from driving during the operation of texting. And that diversion of attention means the driver is unable to drive properly.
I ride a motorcycle and I can spot people texting a hundred yards or more before I am ( as briefly as possible ) alongside them on a four-lane divided highway. The texters are not staying in their chosen lane, typically driving below the speed limit, and in general they are driving in a manner that causes them to appear to be driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol.
And it's ok to allow this behavior to continue ?
Fuck you, Colorado. I know where my tourist dollars won't be spent.
There is no possible legitimate reason for a driver to be holding a cell phone at a red light. The drivers behind you do not want to have to hit their horn to make you move when the light changes, nor do we want to bet our lives on the idea that you'll definitely release the phone when you start driving. You're impeding traffic at best, attempting murder at worst. Powering down the phone is simply a trick people do when they see the cop coming to try to get out of a ticket, so of course it's illegal.
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I was being half-snarky... the GOP health bill hasn't passed yet.
But for real, the Canada thing simply means that a cop is empowered to DO something if he sees a driver with a cell phone in his/her hand while driving, and the driver can't weasel out of it simply by claiming it was turned off, requiring the cop to prove he could tell whether it was on or off from the vantage point of his cruiser.
It's just a legal attempt, democratically passed, to get around the fact that cell phones impair drivers as much as being rip-roaring drunk, but there's no blood-alcohol test they can run on a texter to prove that he was actually texting and not just allegedly holding a switched-off phone while driving (yeah, right), particularly if the texter ditched or destroyed his phone at or just after being pulled-over or engaging in an accident.
That's right, some damn fool can kill your sister, but by raising his hand swearing in court that his phone was off just before it was thrown from his car and destroyed, there's reasonable doubt to that vehicular manslaughter charge.
Yeah, maybe there's evidence out there in cyberland, but what's to compel that knucklehead to serve up his Facebook password? Does the district have the money to subpoena the carrier, the provider, Facebook, and to carry out the cyber-forensics to prove he was texting, and not just ordinary driver careless oh gosh I didn't see the light change. Accidents happen, sorry about your sister, think of how my insurance is gonna go up and thank god my airbag worked right.
So, given that the risk of being T-Boned and instantly transformed into a quadriplegic by an asshole texter is very fucking real, please do enumerate the hardships and dangers of the so-called "nanny-state" that outweigh this attempt to put some teeth into no-texting-while-driving laws, particularly with respect to Canada.
I mean, is there evidence of waves of depressed Molson-drinking immigrants flooding over from the great North, thirsting for the Freedom to text and drive without oppression from storm-trooping Mounties?
I don't think so, I haven't seen it.
But maybe I'm wrong. Any Canadians in slashdot-land want to weigh in? Any youse guys feeling repressed up North up there? or are you guys just so chill you can live fine with your hands off your phones while driving?
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I wager it was reworded to make it no longer illegal to check your phone while stopped in traffic or a red light... Takes like a second and IMO perfectly safe(you are stopped).
I have texting disabled on my phone(s), but I do check screen for notifications through other protocols.
- Streamlined penal code
Article 1: ”it is illegal to do things that a police officer finds reprehensible”.
The end.
Having ambiguous laws that effectively leave most of the decision to the discretion of law enforcement is a great way to confuse everybody, signal that those laws are not that important, make police jobs more difficult, increase the risk of corruption, and foster resentment and suspicion of double standards.
Hey, lawmakers, how about doing your job?
Sorry to hear that you live in a socialist nanny-state.
Maybe if a driver who is texting while driving hits your car and you end up paralyzed for life, you will come to understand that there are times when it is appropriate for the government to make efforts to control the behavior of people who lack the wisdom to control themselves.
Keep being an asshole and a crank. Only other assholes and cranks listen to people like you.
It's nice to see a government where citizens are sometimes respected and treated like adults. Texting while stopped at a stop light is safe.
Levying fines against stop light texting is unjust and treats citizens like cattle to be randomly milked for money.
What kind of jerk wants their fellow citizens fined for no legitimate purpose?
on the minorities without being too obvious about it. Crap like this is how segregation is enforced. I wish I was joking/trolling, but a good buddy of mine is both black and a truck driver and the stories. Not from the deep South (they wouldn't send him there) but from places like California & Utah you'd think would be cut and dry.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This can only mean a few things: either judges or politicians are willing to bend the laws to keep texting and driving without any care for public safety. There are no other reasons to make ambiguous laws that goes against what studies have already proven.
There is no possible legitimate reason for a driver to be holding a cell phone at a red light.
Maps.
The drivers behind you do not want to have to hit their horn to make you move when the light changes
It's rude to make them wait an extra couple seconds. Minor rudeness isn't a police matter. If you want people to routinely have to face police enforcement for minor rudeness, that makes you a bad person. You make life worse for the people around you.
Good people don't want the police to threaten and detain and fine innocent people for following map directions on their phone.
Mind your own business and stop being a jerk.
How many people who text (or yak on the phone) while driving ever think "Holy crap, this is dangerous! I am a normal human being, and am not well suited to be doing this. It is clearly unsafe."
I would bet almost none. They all think that they are somehow superior to everyone else and can do it safely.
And then when they kill a dozen people, they are all "I'm so sorry."
If you made those fines 500 and 3000 ten times higher than they are it would stop.
But then you wont make money.
Keep the law unclear and fines low, profit.
Texting while driving is just way too dangerous. It's just too tempting to hit just one more letter before looking up.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Who is forcing them to break the law?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
You are right that the burden to prove guilty is too great. One woman did contest it in court. While she was initially successful, the ruling was rescinded by a higher court.
I find myself needing to look at the screen while texting (of course, not behind the wheel). There is bound to be many other people like me who do need to look at the screen, but not realize they are not capable of texting and driving at the same time. Sprinkle in a little entitlement and that is a very potent mixture of accidents waiting to happen. So while some people think it is a "socialist nanny-state", it is a small price to pay.
Socialism is the peoples ownership of the means of production. It can be through government, it can be other ways such as worker owned co-ops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Me: I was merely texting while driving in a way that is pathologically reckless and needlessly put people peoples lives at risk. Can I go now?
Officer: You're in Colorado, of course you can.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
> I'd rather live in a socialist nanny state then get T-Boned by some damn fool texting his way straight through a red light.
Here in Colorado, many "texting while driving" cases go like this:
Perp pulls up at red light.
Perp pulls out phone.
Perp puts phone away.
Light turns green.
Perp begins driving away, is immediately pulled over.
Actually catching people texting while driving is hard. So instead, the cops just pull up in tall vehicles at red lights so that they can look in and bust someone.
This law should fix that, while making it a serious offense for those that are actually fucking TEXTING WHILE DRIVING.
Thanks for your two cents, but as a Coloradan, this is an improvement.
Holding a powered down cellphone in a car. I can think of a few reasons to do that:
- An empirical study into the effects of driving one handed.
- Depression induced by an addiction to you phone that is off while you're driving.
- You left your fidget spinner at home.
- You have a degenerative brain disease.
- You're trying to cover up the fact that you were texting while driving and you're a fucking idiot.
Unless you're doing number 1 on a closed circuit in a controlled fashion you have no business playing with your phone while driving and especially not if it is off. Pay attention to the fucking road. This is the single most dangerous activity you're doing today. Respect it.
We are all happy to live in a country free of the fear that utter morons won't kill us.
Sorry to hear that you live in a socialist nanny-state.
Are you allowed to shoot people who are holding a phone while driving, otherwise you are living in a nanny-state too.
(I'm not going to add 'socialist' to it, because socialist isn't synonymous with authoritarian and the subject isn't about wether the government should run businesses or not.)
No country in the EU is anywhere close to socialism. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production.
Ah, the American definition of socialism, where it has to be full blown communism to be accepted as socialism.
No, to be a socialism some of the production is owned by the government. It can be a socialism without all production being owned by the government.
And yes, I consider the US to be a socialism, and no, unlike a lot of people I do not consider socialism to be a bad word.
"my tesla was in autopilot mode officer"
So a adult gets a $300 fine for inappropriate texting. But a teen gets only a $50 one? Leave it to Colorado to make excuses for bad behavior. Any texting would be a distraction by default. But then again since making weed legal traffic accidents and DUI's have gone up significantly. But no fine will stop most from this obsession with instant communication.
To hit the power putton and turn it on?
The US does not agree with you. US is a capitalist democracy they will say. I'd say the US is a crony fakeocracy, but that's not a word.
Ah! But then you would be holding a powered on cell phone which is illegal.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
In a free fucking country, it doesn't fucking matter why you fascist authoritarian piece of dog shit.
You're also a faggot. I bet you got done swallowing a nice steamy jizz load before posting your love of socialism.
The only reasons I ever touch my cell phone at red lights are:
1. maps
2. music. (i have car playlists but sometimes my phone fails to start playing them)
For the second case, I try to use voice commands as much as possible.
My car supports hands free for texting and calling but not to manage some of the other functions of my phone.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Then don't hold them. Why would you need to hold a phone in order to send text messages?
Ezekiel 23:20
If someone texts me, I'll wait until I am stopped at a red light and then quickly glance at the message.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Your frothing-at-the-mouth hyperbole is ridiculous. "Attempted murder"? Here's a dollar, go buy a sense of perspective.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
This will backfire when someone really causes a major accident.
Well and strongly put, and absolutely correct.
This will backfire when someone gets killed.
I'd rather live in a socialist nanny state then get T-Boned by some damn fool texting his way straight through a red light.
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that the only two options were "no texting ever" and "OMG EVERYONE TEXTING ALL THE GODS-DAMNED TIME!!@211!".
...who have never texted while at a red light, or called someone while driving, or otherwise used a cell phone in an illegal way?
Before you raise your hand and say, "I don't," watch out. Really? Never?
OK, my 75-year-old father never has. Maybe you're like him. But I doubt it.
Maybe the law is just catching up with reality.