New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

When the law banning the use of hand-held cell phones was passed in New Jersey in 2008, injury lawyers believed that it would dramatically impact the rate of accidents caused by such distracted driving. It turns out that we may not have been as right as we might have hoped. According to the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety, there are still far too many drivers out there using cell phones while driving and causing accidents.

Since the law went into effect on March 1, 2008, law enforcement officers in New Jersey have issued close to 225,000 citations to motorists for breaking the law. Between 2008 and 2009, there were 3,610 accidents that involved a motorist using a hand-held cell phone. These crashes led to a total of 13 deaths. The number of deaths from cell phone-related accidents seem to be the highest in Camden County with 231 accidents in all related to motorists using cell phones while driving. Burlington County was next with 121 accidents, and Gloucester County was third with 116 accidents traced to the use of hand-held cell phones at the wheel.

According to Division of Highway Traffic Safety chief Pam Fischer, law-enforcement officers are doing their duty, going out there and cracking down hard on motorists who use cell phones while driving. Unfortunately, the number of motorists who break the ban seemed to be far too many for law enforcement to be able to reach them all.

So do I think the laws have failed? No. We simply need better enforcement, heavier fines, and stricter penalties for these laws to work the way they were supposed to.

In related distracted driving news, a new bill proposes that police responding to an accident note down whether the motorist was distracted at the time of the accident. Officers would be given a sheet with a number of distractions - eating, changing radio stations and other distractions - and would have to check on the appropriate one.

Scott Grossman is a New Jersey injury lawyer, representing injured victims of motor vehicle accidents and car crashes in Monmouth, Bergen, Passaic, and Ocean Counties, and across the state of New Jersey.

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A new group that aims to act as Mothers Against Drunk Driving does to support families of DUI crash victims, has just been launched in Washington. FocusDriven is meant to support families of persons killed in auto accidents involving a distracted driver. It’s part of the nationwide campaign against distracted driving, and it aims to a give a voice to victims of such crashes, who have not had enough attention paid to them till now.

The launch of the group was accompanied by new statistics by the National Safety Council that indicates that 28 percent of all accidents involve motorists distracted by their cell phones. Approximately 1.3 million accidents are caused by persons having a conversation on their cell phone behind the wheel, while 200,000 accidents are caused by text messaging drivers. Every year, these accidents kill more than 2,500 people.  It’s the families of these victims that FocusDriven will give a voice to.

The group also plans to pressurize states that have failed to take the texting and talking on the cell phone issues, seriously enough. Several states this year are dealing with legislations relating to bans on text messaging and the use of handheld cell phones. They might face additional pressure from groups like FocusDriven when the time comes for a vote.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has expanded from being a victims support advocacy group to an influential voice for stronger laws against drunk driving, ignition interlock devices and other DUI issues.  I hope FocusDriven can make the same contribution in the fight against distracted driving.  Most importantly, the organization will be able to act as a mouthpiece for the silent victims of distracted driving crashes, allowing them to speak out strongly against inattentive driving. 

Scott Grossman is a Monmouth County auto accident lawyer, representing injured victims of auto accidents in Freehold, Marlboro, Aberdeen, Howell, and across Monmouth County.

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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced plans to hold a summit of experts in September to discuss distracted driving and the risk of accidents. The summit will include transportation officials, safety advocates, law enforcement agencies as well as lawmakers, and will discuss the effects of distracted drivers on traffic safety, as well as measures to deal with the problem. Not surprisingly, cell phone use and text messaging while driving are expected to be the focus of the summit.

The summit plans come soon after several reports linking automobile accidents to cell phone use hit the news. Like I discussed earlier, the New York Times had revealed last month  that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for at least 5 years, had access to data that would have placed pressure on states to pass stronger cell phone safety laws, but failed to make these public.  Soon after, that came a study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which showed that text messaging while driving increased the risk of an accident by up to 23 times. Whether you believe those numbers are not, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that sending text messages when you drive is foolish driving behavior.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the summit is expected to focus on ways to enforce stricter laws banning cell phones behind the wheel. New Jersey does have a ban on handheld devices behind the wheel, but we have seen mixed results with the ban. While cell phone use by New Jersey motorists dropped in the first few months after the ban was imposed, those numbers have picked up since then. That's a troubling fact, and the time is right for New Jersey's legislators to look into why the ban is not working as effectively as it was meant to.

Meanwhile, Bergen County car accident lawyers will be watching the September summit very closely to see if it comes up with any proposals that could add more bite to our cell phone safety laws.

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A new bill introduced in the Senate this week will require states to pass laws banning drivers from text messaging behind the wheel, in new efforts to combat the accident rate from such behavior. .  

The bill comes just one day after a study released by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which showed that drivers who text message at the wheel have a risk of being involved in accident or near accident that’s about 23 times higher than a driver who is not text messaging at the wheel.

Although Freehold car accident lawyers and auto safety advocates have always known about the dangers of text messaging by motorists, the Virginia Tech study shows exactly how much we magnify our chances of being involved in an accident when we text and drive. The study used cameras installed inside vehicles, to track the movement of drivers' eyes as they performed several tasks that included text messaging. It was found that drivers who were sending text messaging while driving took their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. When you are behind the wheel and driving at 55mph, taking your eyes off the road for 4.6 seconds is long enough to cause a serious accident. 

The study has come for a great deal of scrutiny, and now Democrats, including New York’s Senator Charles E. Schumer have proposed a bill to prevent text messaging-related accidents. The bill proposes to withhold 25 percent of annual federal funds for highway safety, from states who don’t write laws banning text messaging by drivers.

Currently, New Jersey is one among 13 states that has a ban on text messaging behind the wheel. However, there are signs that our ban may not have been as successful as our lawmakers and New Jersey personal injury lawyers would have wanted it to be. Earlier this month, a survey by the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety and Farleigh Dickinson University revealed that the number of motorists in New Jersey who admitted to text messaging while driving increased by 40 percent over last year. 21 percent of the motorists admitted to texting behind the wheel, an increase from 15 percent last year. 60 percent of drivers below 30 years of age admitted to sending text messages while behind the wheel.  

That all this is happening in New Jersey, which has been at the forefront of efforts against cell phone use by drivers, is of concern to New Jersey personal injury lawyers. Our state was the first to make texting by a motorist a primary offense, allowing police officers to pull over a driver for the mere act of text messaging, even if there were no other violations.  According to the Center for Auto Safety, the problem is actually getting worse.  Even with laws against their practice and enforcement, motorists continue to text while they drive, with potentially dangerous consequences.

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Image Courtesy: Flickr - streetsmarts

In March, 18 municipalities across 17 counties in New Jersey, including Bergen County undertook a special two week crackdown on motorists who use their cell phones while driving, thereby increasing their risk of being involved in an automobile accident. The two week crackdown also included the participation of Atlantic, Morris, Union,  Mercer counties and others.

New Jersey passed a law last year prohibiting the use of hand held cell phones behind the wheel.  However, judging by the number of people who continue to use handheld cell phones while driving, many New Jerseyans, including those in Bergen and Monmouth County, still haven’t received that particular message. 

Since the law was passed, more than 108,000 errant motorists have been pulled over and ticketed for talking or texting on their phones. To reinforce these efforts, a special two week crackdown on drivers operating handheld cell phones resulted in hundreds of summons being issued to motorists who were in violation of the law. Disturbingly enough, after the two week crackdown ended, a survey showed that the number of motorists using cell phones after the crackdown was almost the same as those before the special enforcement. Even more disturbingly, 90% of New Jersey drivers are aware that there is a law prohibiting them from operating a handheld phone, and that they can be pulled over and fined for doing so. Also, 80% of the people seem to support it. 

So, what does that mean?  That people are aware of the law, but many of them support it only in theory? There could be other reasons why the law, even though it has resulted in dramatic spikes in the numbers of people ticketed for cell phone use, has still not led to people curbing that itch to reach for the phone when it rings. Law enforcement has had a problem putting enough officers on duty to enforce the law. So, the numbers of motorists who have been able to get away with cell phone use has been higher than Governor Corzine would have liked when he signed the law.

Personal Injury Lawyers Support the Ban

Cell phone use behind the wheel has grown into enough of a driving risk for states across the country to move quickly to enact laws regulating the use of these devices. No state in the country has a complete ban on the use of all cell phones while driving, but many including California and New Jersey have laws banning the use of handheld phones, which includes texting. In New Jersey, the law itself has been controversial with safety experts divided over how effective a ban on handheld devices is. Many MonmouthCounty personal injury lawyers however believe that the ban on handheld devices is a promising first step, and while it may not show the kinds of results we want immediately, it could lead to a more comprehensive ban down the road.

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Image Courtesy: Flickr - Mike Dakinewavamon Kline

New Jersey has the distinction of being one of the first states to clamp down on the use of hand held cell phones, but now a national safety group is calling for a nationwide ban on cell phone use while driving to eliminate one of the biggest causes of auto accidents.

Drivers in NJ are banned from talking on a hand held phone, or text messaging on one, and teen drivers are banned from all cell phone devices behind the wheel, but the state doesn't have a complete ban on cell phone use by motorists. In fact, no state in the country has a complete ban in place. That needs to change, say the National Safety Council whose President Janet Froetcher has called for a ban on all cell phone devices, both hand held and hands free. The reason for the push for no cell phone use in a moving vehicle is the growing number of automobile crashes that are being linked to these accidents. Ever since these devices became a part of our lives, cell phone usage while driving has become the biggest distraction to motorists, ranking above turning on the radio, reaching for something, or eating in the car.  

Cell phone use is not looked at with the kind of reprehension we would reserve for, say, a drunk driver, and yet, evidence seems to suggest that using your cell phone – whether hand held or hands free devices – can negatively affect your ability to drive just as much as a few drinks can. Froetcher says the mistake is in assuming that a ban on hand held devices will suffice, when logic will tell you that the biggest distraction from using a cell phone doesn't occur because you are using your hand to hold the phone, but because your mind is miles away with your chatting partner, instead of the road ahead. In short, it's the attention deficit when you're using a cell phone that's the cause for accidents blamed on cell phone use.

In recent months, the Metrolink train crash in California has firmly turned the spotlight on cell phone use by drivers. The engineer in that accident was later found to have been exchanging text messages while he was on the ill fated journey. Dozens of messages were found to have been sent by the engineer, including one sent just a few minutes before the crash. The calls for tougher legislation to ban cell phone use have grown louder since then.

In New Jersey, it's been hard to quantify the effects of our cell phone legislation. While accident rates are down, it's still not certain whether this is due at least in part to rising gas prices.  As a personal injury lawyer who regularly represents victims of accidents in Monmouth County, I believe we will find in the days and years ahead that these laws lead to safer streets and more responsible driving which is nothing but good news, for New Jerseyans.

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