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looks like you two bozos are the ones not caring about the 'law' as it's clearly noted above.
thanks for the reply anyway
We-ll, you did say you were facing a trial by jury. They may be guided in similar ways as these posters......so you might want to take that into account.
Hi, i got a ticket 3 months ago for "texting while driving". I was at the airport, picking up wife; going 5 miles per hour, and using the "Text by Voice" app which allows for texting without any type of manual input into the phone.
I went to court last month and the judge didn't agree with me that the law says only "manually entering multiple letters or text in the device as a means of communicating with another person" is illegal. The officer said (i think incorrectly) that all texting is illegal.
i have a appeal court date next week (by a Jury!) and could use all the help i can get.
Any advice for presenting my case in court?
Plead guilty, pay the fine, and turn off the phone while driving!
We-ll, you did say you were facing a trial by jury. They may be guided in similar ways as these posters......so you might want to take that into account.
Yeah....if the jury consists of 12 village idiots not caring about the letter of the law, then yes, i agree with you!
You just described almost every jury in the system. Either that or you have a lot more trust in your fellow Americans than I do.
I remember being on a juror for a credit card fraud case and during deliberations and although the defendant was guilty as sin, there was one hold out becasue he said he felt everyone deserves a second chance!
3. Still, the law is the law. Having read the law I think the OP makes a decent argument that, whatever any of us think of the wisdom of his conduct, he was not doing something that the legislature has designated as illegal.
I disagree.
Remember that the legislature is not filled with an all knowing body of experts. So while they may try to craft legislation to prevent a particular problem, they cannot account for every scenario nor technology advances.
Furthermore, there are powerful interests that try to minimize impacts on their businesses and will try to craft wording to make exceptions for such things. Lawyers being a prime example, because if the law is ironclad without any ambiguity, people will have little incentive to hire them.
Do not forget that there are a ton of smartphone features such as navigation where people can be distracted. In most cars the Nav system will not allow you to input information while the car is in motion. However Nav on phones have no such restrictions(not yet at least) so people can be playing around with their phones Nav and be totally distracted. I'm sure some slick lawyer will say "my client wasn't texting, he was using Nav to get to the nearest hospital because he thought he was having a heart attack" and circumvent the intent of the law.
Lastly, even though texting is the focus, many people cannot even agree on what texting is. For example, many people would argue(incorrectly I might add) that reading a text is not "texting". To them you are texting when you reply. Any logical person who is not a texting zombie themselves knows it matters little whether someone is watching a streaming movie, playing a video game, or anything else you can do on your smartphone. Anything that takes your eyes off the road and/or distracts you from driving should be prohibited for the safety of everyone on the road.
I remember being on a juror for a credit card fraud case and during deliberations and although the defendant was guilty as sin, there was one hold out becasue he said he felt everyone deserves a second chance!
I was on a lawsuit jury and one bleeding heart woman wanted to give the guy several thousands more because she felt sorry for the idiot. We ganged up on her and shut her down. He got 6 months pay and medical expenses for a total of $27,000. He and his lawyer wanted around $375,000.
Well, then they should have charged him with distracted driving then. All the more reason not to have texting be a separate case when it is all about being distracted and there are hundreds of reasons you could be. {snip}
I agree with this post. For some reason, and I think using the word "reason" is a stretch because there is no real logical reasoning being applied but just emotional knee-jerk feelings, texting while driving has become a hot button issue, and I think it's ridiculous, and I say this as a non-texter. I'd be willing to bet the farm that the self-righteous types in here screaming and getting so worked up probably do things just as bad everyday on the road--staring at that cute female jogger, eating foods that don't mix well with driving, fumbling in the glove box, poking at their Garmin or TomTom GPS, fiddling with the car music system too much, applying make-up or shaving, any number of things. Heck I recall a large grassy stretch of our college's campus years back where many females were known to sunbathe on warm spring days, and how people told me that on such days significantly more wrecks were observed.
Newsflash--you're no different than the texters. Get over yourself.
To me, a distraction is a distraction is a distraction. Period. I don't care if you hit me or almost hit me because you were texting or because you were distracted while eating your passenger's boogers. You were distracted and that is the offense, not why you were distracted. To single out one form of a distraction special versus the others is flat-out bigotry and the same as racial or gender profiling. When you criticize someone for being distracted while driving and you do the same thing, you're being a hypocrite.
As an aside, I wonder how long it will be until this type of tech shows us how long we look away from the road to look at radios, nav units, climate controls, rearview mirrors, and gauges? If we ban any distractions, we have to ban all of them.
Billboards, pretty girls on the sidewalk, etc are all distractions, too:
let's get scared, overreact and ban them all.
I dont text and drive, But I'm really hating this culture of fear that is growing.
I certainly see your point, and agree with it to a certain extent. Many an accident occurs with people eating, looking back at their children, women putting on makeup, rubber-neckers of accidents, etc.
Presumably a ticket for distracted driving would cover just about anything a LEO were to witness. However we need more of a deterrent to make people aware of the dangers they pose BEFORE they snuff out an innocent life. So prohibiting all usage of smartphones, especially texing (could have greater penalties), except in an emergency should be strongly considered.
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The Anti-Texting Crowd Is a Bunch of Hypocrites
