As of January 1st, 2010, drivers in Austin, TX cannot legally use cell phones for anything other than phone calls. That means no texting, no scrolling, no surfing, no navigating while driving on a public roadway unless you need to report an emergency.

There will be a one-month grace period, during which offenders will get off with a warning. After that, violations are Class C misdemeanors that could result in a $500 fine. Here are some answers to questions about the law.

How will the ban be enforced?

With difficulty. Officers will make stops based primarily on erratic driving, said Austin Assistant Police Chief Al Eells. Beyond that, police will have to catch a driver in the act to make a traffic stop. Because dialing a cell phone can look like texting, an officer will need to watch a driver for a “prolonged” period of time to make sure he’s actually texting, said Cmdr. Stephen Baker, who heads up Austin Police Department’s highway enforcement command.

Moreover, since the violation must also occur while the vehicle is moving, the observing officer essentially will have to be driving alongside a potential offender. Thus, for safety reasons, the opportunity to view driving-and-texting scofflaws will occur mainly in slower, city driving. “It’s going to be a lot of officer discretion,” Baker said.

What about the surfing/scrolling/e-mailing part of the ban: How will that be enforced?

Lightly. It will be difficult to distinguish whether a driver is, say, looking up a contact to dial (legal) or reading e-mail (illegal). “If a person is just holding a cell phone up in front of his face and reading it, we don’t make that stop,” Baker said. “There’s no way we’re going to be taking those to court.”

Will police take my cell phone and read my texts?

While prosecutors say such searches would be legal, Baker said Austin police won’t search anyone’s phone.

What if I’m from out of town and haven’t heard about the law?

Driver beware. Eells said the city will place informational brochures at places such as the airport and convention center. “Will that capture the guy traveling through Austin on I-35? Probably not,” he said.

Will anyone be arrested?

Not unless the driver refuses to sign a citation. A texting violation won’t go on the driver’s record, either.

How big is the problem locally?

Austin police report that since the beginning of the year, there have been 129 serious collisions in which cell phones have been implicated and 12 involving texting while driving.

Why is texting banned and not cell phones? Read the rest of this entry »

Yep, that’s right! While running an errand during a break from work, I was stopped by one of Austin’s finest. In the end, I ended up getting a ticket. And, I’ll freely admit that I was guilty of what the officer described! The only problem is: What I was ticketed for is NOT against the law!

I work in Austin, TX near Metric and Braker. During one of my breaks from work, I made a quick trip to purchase an air compressor from a Craigslist seller. He lived near Lamar and North Loop. On my way back, I was going north on N. Lamar approaching Hwy 183. At the stop light at Morrow street, I was in the left lane. Intending to turn north on 183, I realized that I needed to be in the right lane (the green arrow on the map). So, when the light turned green, I pulled through the intersection, used my turn signal, and smoothly moved over two lanes. There was only one vehicle, several car lengths to the right-rear of me; and, I was never close enough to him to be in any way reckless.

Anyway, in my move to get to the right lane, I drove over the solid white line that delineates the regular lanes from the “exit” lane (where the little red arrow points). I continued on, through the next couple of lights, turning onto the northbound access road. Then, flashing red & blue lights caught my attention. I was being pulled over by an Austin cop. But, for what?! I thought maybe I had clipped through a yellow light at one of the signals or something.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Protest Red Light Cameras in Austin, Texas!

Call : http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/default.htm
E-Mail: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/groupemail.htm
Agenda: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council_meetings/public_meetings.cfm

Red light cameras present several constitutional issues (due process, privacy statutes and possibly the 14th Amendment/equal protection clause) and they are ineffective.

• Studies nationwide show rear-end collisions have risen anywhere from 8-81% where implemented, and the drivers who cause the worst collisions are shown to be the least likely to account for the cameras’ presence.
• The programs are open to corruption: private vendors profit from fines levied spawning illegal and unethical measures to increase fines; they have access to private information without any public accountability.
• Prevention is easier and less expensive: instead of lowering yellow light times to increase fines, upping them one second can decrease collisions by 40%!

Read the rest of this entry »

A study of red-light cameras in Houston showed that traffic accidents doubled at those intersections in the first year after they were put in.

Mayor Bill White defended the use of the cameras, which he has favored, saying they prevented even more wrecks. Critics, however, said that the city-financed study supports their contention that the cameras are more about generating revenue than making streets safer.

Violators photographed running red lights at the 50 intersections monitored by cameras get $75 tickets in the mail. Since September 2006, the cameras have led to at least 387,000 citations and generated more than $20 million in revenue.

“There is no scientific, documented proof that collisions are reduced with the red-light camera program,” said Mike Sullivan, a Houston city councilman who opposes the cameras. “I’ve maintained all along that the program was flawed.”

White said a 40 percent reduction in citations in October compared with the same month a year ago is “proof in the pudding” that drivers are heeding the cameras.

“Our goal is to reduce the number of people who are running red lights,” he said in Tuesday’s online edition of the Houston Chronicle.

“Collisions are going up all over the city,” Bob Stein, a Rice University political science professor and one of the report’s authors, said Monday. “But red-light cameras have held back that increase at approaches where they have been installed.”

The mayor and the study’s authors are recommending more cameras at some intersections for additional research but acknowledged that comprehensive citywide vehicle crash data are not available.

Stein also acknowledged that Houston police figures show that the accident rate is down since 2004 but said those data are unreliable because police don’t file reports on every crash.

Researchers plan to look at insurance industry data to bolster their findings. Those results are expected sometime next summer.

Austin has seven red-light cameras. Police statistics on four of the cameras show that accidents increased at two locations and remained the same at two. Accident information was not available for the other three cameras.

Source: Austin American Statesman

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