Seattle police busting more people than ever for talking while driving

It’s been five years since the state made it illegal to talk or text on your handheld mobile phone while driving. But the Seattle Police Department is writing more tickets for the offense than ever, according to a new analysis by Geekwire.

In 2014, Seattle police issued 2,249 tickets to drivers talking on their phones without a Bluetooth or other hands-free speaker, a 22 percent increase over the year before, according to data provided by the Seattle Municipal Court.

SPD issued 99 tickets for texting while driving, an offense police say is more difficult to detect. That’s slightly less than the year before.

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“Whether more people are actually committing the offense or we just caught more last year is difficult to say,” Detective Drew Fowler tells MyNorthwest.com.

Fowler says the department has not made any extra emphasis to bust people for cell phone violations, but officers are always looking to make the streets safer as part of their normal routine.

“Nobody likes getting tickets but I think people would like it even less if they were hit by a distracted driver, so we’re just trying to keep everyone safer.”

Fowler says while it’s easy to spot people talking on a phone held up to their ear, catching people texting is much harder since many hide it below the window where officers can’t see it.

The increase in the number of citations issued for talking or texting while driving isn’t limited to Seattle.

Geekwire found law enforcement across the state issued 39,389 tickets in 2013, based on data gathered by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. Data hasn’t been compiled yet for 2014. Those numbers don’t include data from Seattle, which issued fewer than 2,000 tickets during the same period for talking or texting.

But Shelly Baldwin, legislative liason with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, says far more people continue talking, texting or surfing the web while driving with a handheld device.

We know that 10 percent of people are on their phone, by observational survey. And that is responsible for 26 percent of all crashes.

The WTSC is pushing a new bill (SB 5656) that would toughen and clarify the laws for talking or texting while driving.

“The law was written when we still had flip phones. It is hard to understand and difficult to enforce.”

The new measure would ban all handheld use. Current law only applies to drivers who are holding a mobile device to their ear, so many simply hold it to their mouths instead.

The new law also addresses all forms of electronic data rather than just texting, and include a prohibition on the use of handhelds at stop signs and traffic lights, requiring drivers to pull over completely before they can use their handheld device.

“We know people are checking their email, their stocks, Google. We know that if we have a clear law and we can enforce it effectively and we can run some education to the public, we can get to that behavior change,” she says.

The proposal would double fines for subsequent offenses in five years and infractions would be placed on a driver’s record and reported to insurance companies.

A training video produced by the WTSC demonstrates the difficulty and frustration law enforcement officers face in trying to enforce the current law: