Chicago Suburb Cracking Down on Texting While Driving Illinois has issued a hands-free cellphone law, but unfortunately, there are still many drivers who choose to ignore the law. According to the National Safety Council, there are 1,600,000 car accidents each year that are caused by texting while driving. This accounts for almost 25% of all car accidents. The Institute for Highway Safety Fatality Facts breaks this down into 11 teen deaths every day that are caused by texting while driving. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has stated that texting while driving makes you 23 times more likely to crash. All of these statistics prove that hands-free driving is the safest way to drive, which is why the police department in Lombard, Illinois launched a month-long enforcement campaign in which they strictly focused on ticketing people who were using their cell phones while driving.
The Lombard police department’s campaign ran from August 1-August 31, 2014and police officers had a strong focus on ticketing drivers who were using a hands-held device while they are driving. Sergeant Joseph Grage believed this campaign came at a great time since most schools were starting their classes within just a few weeks. "We want to get people concentrating on the road, especially with the kids starting to come out in the morning, coming to and from school," he said, “Distracted driving is a dangerous epidemic and it’s our job to spread awareness through enforcement of the new law. Crashes and deaths resulting from distracted driving are preventable tragedies. Drivers need to remember that if they drive with a phone in one hand, they can expect a ticket in the other.” The new Illinois state law forbids drivers from talking on any device that is not handsfree while they are driving. There will also be a fee that the driver will receive if they are caught talking on a hand-held device that starts at $75. If the driver is a repeated offender, they could pay $150 and eventually their driver’s license could become suspended.
The new law also comes with harsh penalties for any car accident that was caused by an electronic device being utilized at the time of the crash. If bodily harm was a result of the crash, the driver could spend up to one year in prison and if the crash was fatal, the driver could end up with a prison sentence up to 3 years. The Lombard Police Department was also working on reducing the amount of rear-end accidents. Sgt. Grage said that roughly 33% of all car accidents every year are rearend accidents and they are very often caused by distracted driving. This new law came into effect on January 1, 2014 and during the first few months following the new law, many violators were surprised to be pulled over for talking on their cell phone. Grage said that many of the people who were pulled over did not realize that talking on a hand-held cellphone was illegal outside of Chicago. "It's a behavior a lot of people do," Grage said. "(The law) needed a little more publicity." Lombard is doing their part to bring more publicity to this law with their month-long campaign. Since the new law came into effect at the beginning of that year, the Lombard Police Department issued approximately 375 tickets to drivers who were either talking without using a hands-free device or they were texting while driving. Grage admits that this law can be difficult to enforce since it can be challenging to catch drivers who are texting. More often, he said, violators are getting fined because they were holding their phone to their ear, since that is more obvious to spot. Police officers were positioned in “zones� during the month-long campaign with the only purpose being to spot cellphone violators, utilizing the same technique that police officers use to catch drivers who are speeding or not using a seatbelt. "There's a rhyme to the reason here," Grage said, noting that people still need to be educated about the law. "Just getting it out there is part of getting compliance." The hope for the campaign was to not only educate the residents of Lombard about the new law, but to also inspire other suburbs in the Chicagoland area to follow suit and bring the law the publicity it needs. For more information please visit our website: www.rblaw.net