Driving Forward The Cell Phone Penalties.
ROCHESTER, Minn. – When Donny Harder crossed the road outside Southwest High School in Minneapolis in the fall of 2006, a driver on a cell-phone sped by, narrowly missing him and his sister.
Harder took his outrage to the Legislature. Based on his complaints, lawmakers have proposed a new bill that doubles the fine for speeding if a person is using a cell phone at the time of the violation.
The bill, proposed in January, is now wending its way through the House.
One of the authors of the bill, Sen. Scott Dibble, said it’s a reasonable attempt to dissuade drivers from using a cell phone.
“We’re not trying to prevent drivers from using a cell-phone,� he said. “The only time a motorist would get pulled over for using a cell-phone is if he or she is speeding.�
Dibble said he wants to make sure this bill doesn’t turn into a political game, where people use Harder’s complaint to get more out of the bill than was originally planned.
“What generally happens is that folks come forward and want it to be a ‘distracted drivers’ bill,� he said. “We’re trying to avoid this and keep this bill exclusively cell-phone related to increase the likelihood of it passing.�
Dibble said he likened the bill to that of speeding through a construction zone on the highway, where fines are doubled.
“In and of itself, driving through a construction zone is not illegal,� he said. “However, speeding through a construction zone can get you pulled over in the same way that speeding using a cell-phone would, if the bill passes.�
Cell phones are far from the greatest causes of accidents. In 2005, 223 cell-phone related accidents were reported in Minnesota out of a total of 94,969 accidents on the road.
But Dibble said he expect cell phones to become more of a factor in traffic accidents as more motorists use their cell phones while driving.
Lauren Pockl, a political science major at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks it’s a good idea to increase the disincentive to speed while talking on the phone. She drives from Como to the University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus four times a week.
“I live in the Como neighborhood, and people on their cell phones are always speeding near me,� she said. “It’s not always a comfortable place to be a pedestrian.�
Likewise, James Scannell, a professor at Rochester’s Community and Technical College, drives his car to Minneapolis to teach at Augsburg College every week.
“I can’t even begin to count the number of times someone on their cell-phone hasn’t noticed me on the road,� he said. “It’s about time they thought more about what they were doing.�
The bill has passed at a transportation committee and is currently awaiting a hearing at a judiciary committee. Dibble said that he expects little opposition to the bill.
“I can’t think of any reason why anyone would think this is a bad idea,� he said.
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This story was reported because I got the idea by looking through a list of Bills currently being discussed in the Minnesota State Legislature. Having had some near-accidents involving other drivers not paying close enough attention to the road, it was something I cared about. Ethically, I didn't want to report with a bias, so I spoke to one of the authors of the bill to get his side of the story. If he didn't care very much about the bill, I'd report that. If he cared very much, I'd report that. You have to be careful when reporting such stories not to be biased in telling the story, but you are allowed to have feelings one way or the other. First was to analyze public records showing accident statistics. Despite finding a very low number of accidents as a result of cell phone usage, I went ahead with the story because otherwise it would be admitting to a bias. The story was mainly about the bill, not about accidents in general. If there were more statistics available about accidents prior to early 2000, I could have worked in a percentage increase of some sort, - regarding the number of accidents.
The biggest challenge in writing this story was getting a hold of people to talk to. It was quite tough getting to speak to senators. I was almost ready to give up on the story and write something different, but I'm glad I didn't, since persistence finally paid off when I got to speak to Sen. Dibble. He was really great to talk to, and didn't spout law speak at me. He was very down to earth about the issue. If I had more time, I would have been more persistent with other co-authors of the bill to try and speak to them, too.
As journalism has indeed moved in the direction of immediate, multimedia, 24/7 coverage, I think it would have been very interesting (and more fun, less black and white) to include some photos of people driving, perhaps some blurred pictures of people on cell phones, close-ups of cell phones etc, just to convey the mood. Mood has become quite a large factor of print reporting, especially online, since nobody wants to read piles of text without anything to break it up. I'm not sure audio would have fit here; audio is generally quite intrusive to text reading. For this story anyway, photos would have been a really great complement. Ethically, there would be nothing too much to worry about here. If the pictures of drivers on cell phones were close up, I would want to protect their identities in some way, by cropping their faces out of the image etc, but other than that, there are no worries here.