Daley Blames - Who Else? - The Media For Oprah-geddon
Chicago Gets Googled
Friday Flashback - Old School Oprah
Today's Transgender Day of Remembrance Honors the Dead
Review: Paramount Room
Man, those were the days.
Motorists chatting away on their cell phones could pay up to $500 under a new ordinance designed to strengthen Chicago’s cell phone ban. Ald. Vi Daley of the Lincoln Park area is pushing to increase fines from $75 to $100 for drivers caught yapping without a hands-free device. Fines for drivers who cause an accident while using a cell phone could increase from $250 to $500.
Daley (no relation to The Boss) told the Sun-Times that she doesn’t believe police aren’t properly enforcing the ban, but downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly shared a more interesting observation. “I might also add that I regularly see city employees operating city vehicles while talking on their cell phones. That practice needs to end immediately. The city needs to lead by example,” he said.
If it were up to the National Safety Council, that day of reckoning may be coming sooner rather than later. The advocacy group announced this week a campaign calling for a national ban on the use of all cell phone devices while driving. After combing through more than 50 studies on the topic, the NSC found that cell phone devices caused an estimated 636,000 crashes, 333,000 injures, and 2,600 deaths a year. The group’s proposed ban goes farther than Chicago’s by including hands-free devices. That’s because a study conducted by the University of Utah found that talking on the devices equates to driving drunk.
With the city and state’s current economic crisis, don’t be too surprised if the next round is on us.
Photo taken from techfresh.net.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Has she...been to Chicago?
Make the fine upty-bajillion dollars, won't fix the budget gap, won't stop the offense and cops won't enforce it. It's nuisance law, I'd rather have the police doing actual police work instead of playing "spot the mobile".
Agreed.
If you ever read the Second City Cop blog, there seems to be an order from the higher ups (whether it's Daley or Weis, I am not sure) for police officers to issue at least one revenue generating ticket a day. However, since the CPD has been without a contract for something like close to two years, many of the cities finest choose not to play meter-maid. To which I cannot fault them. Pay to play, right?
Just one?
Mind you, it's stunningly easy to catch people doing SOMETHING illegal. Just sit at an intersection and watch for, oh, let's be charitable and say 5 minutes.
I don't like that people dial and drive, it's silly, distracting and dangerous. But fund-raising masquerading as law-enforcement is not the answer.
Frankly, I'd suggest, if you want to see actual change, that insurance companies start charging increased rates to anyone convicted of driving without an earpiece. Not just a little either.
And I also might add criminal charges if you kill someone while texting.
It infuriates me that someone can kill someone while driving and texting and just walk away.
Vehicular homicide is a crime and driving while texting is clearly reckless by even the most liberal interpretations of the law.
This law is about money and politicians looking like they're DOING SOMETHING. When they're really not.
True.
I guess putting someone in jail for killing someone while driving and texting is not going to generate any income (there have been several cases here, where someone did just that and walked out of the courtroom with a slap on the wrist).
I don't know about you all, but it seems like I actually see more people than not, driving while yacking on a cell phone.
If they catch just half of them, I would think it would solve the cities budget problems.
The idea of insurance companies charging more for violations is a good one, but I would imagine the city would lobby against that for their own selfish reasons, becaue like you say...they're not doing this cuz they care. It's always all about the money.
I don't understand all these "laws". I thought that your hands are supposed to be on the 2 and 10 position.
Me, I'm waiting for my robot monkey butler to be able to start driving me around so I don't have to deal with this bullshit.
It's not like taking the police stopping, amtraak derailing train is a decent alternative.
The cops in my neighborhood are very talented at generating revenue off parked cars with expired stickers, etc. But reckless driving, cell phone driving, jaywalking (all the offenses that actually contribute to the all-around chaos on Chicago streets) ... none of those are enforced.
I would imagine that most of those tickets were placed there by the Department of Revenue (yes that is what it is called), who is tasked by the city to enforce parking violations.
In my experience these people become incredibly zealous with the writing of tickets near the end of the month, which isn't all that surprising as I am sure some sort of quota system is in place. They love to write tickets to cars who aren't registered in the City of Chicago. The problem with this is, only residents of the city need to have their car registered, not people visiting. And even then when you move to the city I believe the grace period to register your car is 6 months. It is probably a very easy ticket to get out of, but also goes unchallenged by people who don't want to deal with the process.
I got a new motorcycle last year and one time when I was parking in Lakeview visiting a friend, a police officer came up to me.
Cop: "Where do you live?"
Me: (friendly, not knowing I was being interrogated) "Oh, a couple miles South"
Cop: "I didn't ask you how far from here, I asked where you live"
Me: "Uhh...okay...Old Town"
Cop: "So you live in Chicago?"
Me: "Yes..."
Cop: "Where's your vehicle sticker?"
Me: *pointing to the temporary plate* "This bike is new, I haven't gotten it yet because you need a license plate number"
Cop: "You still need to have one"
And on and on...eventually he grows tired of yelling at me and walks away.
I wish he would have given me a ticket.
I'd hardly expect the police to enforce a law that they violate regularly. I see police talking on cell phones while driving nearly as often as I see them roll through red lights. (Without lights/sirens, of course.)
Why enact lawa that nobody enforces? People in Chicagoland are constantly on the phone while driving which also explains their aversion to using turn signals.
"Hang up and drive" existing law should be enforced together with using turn signals, making improper turns that block the entire intersection etc etc.
How about just teaching people to "keep up with the traffic" so there is more flow? How about some common sense and imagination? Can there be a law enforcing their use?
why enact laws like this? because arbitrary enforcement allows police to target whoever they want with fines or prosecution. These sorts of laws are the sorts of things that allow police to pull someone over for Driving While Black, or to only target out of towners, or out of staters, or whoever they decide to pick on.