Ohio's new texting ban now in full effect

03.01.13 — Ohio’s new tex­ting while dri­ving ban fully kicked in Fri­day, March 1, 2013, end­ing a six month warn­ing period. Those caught tex­ting while dri­ving can be cited.

The new law allows law enforce­ment offi­cers to pull over dri­vers under the age of 18 if they see them tex­ting. It is what’s known as a pri­mary offense, and can result in a sub­stan­tial fine and loss of dri­ving privileges.

For adults, the new law makes tex­ting while dri­ving a sec­ondary offense, mean­ing the dri­ver has to be pulled over for another infrac­tion, and a ticket for tex­ting can be added on.

The only excep­tions are pre-programmed GPS, vehi­cles in a sta­tion­ary (parked) posi­tion and out­side a lane of travel (i.e. in a park­ing lot or on the side of a road­way), and emer­gency calls to law enforce­ment, hos­pi­tal, fire depart­ment, etc. But “tex­ting” doesn’t just mean thumb­ing in mes­sages. It applies to read­ing, too — even check­ing your email.

“It is impor­tant to note that ‘tex­ting’ includes writ­ing, send­ing, and read­ing any text-based com­mu­ni­ca­tion includ­ing instant mes­sages and emails, as well as tra­di­tional mobile-to-mobile texts,” Mor­row County Safe Com­mu­ni­ties Spokesper­son Vicki Allen, RN said in a news release.

A recent sur­vey by the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safety found that 35 per­cent of dri­vers admit­ted to tex­ting behind the wheel, and almost half of motorists aged 18 to 24 admit­ted to it. Also, nearly 5,500 peo­ple were killed and 448,000 were injured in the U.S. in 2009 due to dis­tracted dri­ving, and 16 per­cent of teens involved in a fatal acci­dent in 2009 were reported to have been distracted.

“The bot­tom line,” Allen says, “is to just not use these devices while dri­ving. That phone call, text mes­sage and email can wait.”
Ohio is the 39th state to enact a tex­ting law.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Mar 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.