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If a Law is Unenforced, Will Anyone Obey It?

Rappaport, Glass, Green and Levine is a car accident injury law firm that represents those who have been injured in car accidents in New York. One of the leading causes of car accidents is distracted driving, which occurs when someone talks on a cell phone without using a handsfree device, or uses the phone to send text messages. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident in Manhattan or Long Island, contact the law offices of Rappaport, Glass, Green and Levine for a free legal consultation today.

Teenagers, with their finely honed sense of invulnerability, don’t really understand that many of the rules that parents put into place exist for good reasons and for their own good. How do you think a teenager would react if you stopped telling him when to go to school? Or how to dress? Or stopped asking to see his report card? Even if your teen has good character, how would you think they would react if you completely stopped enforcing the rules? What if you let your teen break all the rules without grounding him? What if you let him get poor grades and didn’t say anything about it? What if you caught him smoking or drinking underage and didn’t do anything about it? What if he stayed out all night without calling and you didn’t do anything about it?

The results would probably be catastrophic.

We bring this up because a recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety claims that not only is cell phone use by teen drivers up despite laws to the contrary, but the laws aren’t being enforced by the police.

The study took place in North Carolina, which enacted a ban on teens using cell phones while driving on December 1, 2006. According to the study, 11 percent of teen drivers were observed using cellphones as they left school in the afternoon before the ban took place. About 5 months after the ban took effect, almost 12 percent of teen drivers were observed using phones. Most drivers were using hand-helds. Nine percent were holding phones to their ears, while fewer than 1 percent were using hands-free devices. About 2 percent were observed dialing or texting.

Bear in mind that despite a well-publicized ban, cell phone use by driving teens went up.

So since more teens were ignoring the law, citations by police must have gone up dramatically, right?

Not according to the IIHS study. “…Most parents and teen drivers agreed that police officers weren't looking for cellphone violators. Seventy-one percent of teens and 60 percent of parents reported that enforcement was rare or nonexistent. Only 22 percent of teenagers and 13 percent of parents surveyed believed the law was being enforced fairly often or a lot.”

There are two questions that need to be asked. First, why aren’t the new laws being enforced? Why aren’t local and state police issuing citations to those that violate the law? Secondly, why does a cell-phone driving ban involve only teens? Why not extend the ban to anyone behind the wheel of a car, regardless of age?

Driving while talking on the phone is DANGEROUS. Driving while texting is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS. It causes drivers to not pay attention to the road. It causes car accidents. It causes injuries. It causes deaths.

If the Carolinas are any indication of a nationwide trend, then we would wager that many Manhattan and Long Island residents are on our roads right now, talking and texting with impunity.

If you or a loved one has been injured by a distracted driver, contact Rappaport, Glass, Greene and Levine for a free legal consultation today.