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2009 brought in a plethora of new laws and one in particular--texting while driving--has a lot of people asking questions.
On an earlier post about the texting law this week, LAist reader sucatrapsorter asked: "Does 'driving' include instances where one is stopped at a light and texting/emailing, or does it only refer to when the car is actually in motion?"
"It's against the law. If you are stopped at a light or a stop sign, you are still in control of that vehicle and need to be able to react," CHP's Jaimie Coffee told Alana Semuels of the LA Times in an extremely thorough 20 question set about the new law.
"I'm good as long as i can still google map on my cell," commented LAist reader tp4free.
"Technically speaking... if the text-based communication is not going to another 'person' you're not in violation. The new law addresses two-way communication," Coffee told The Times. So, yes, you're all good to type directions into a map or GPS program on your phone as well as read them. However, it's always recommended you don't for safety reasons.
Finally, BingosDingos asked "what happens when you have an older phone that requires manually dialing a number despite having a headset? That's not really texting." And no, it's not texting, per this law Coffee says "you can still dial, and the new law doesn't prohibit you from dialing. However, as soon as you hit send, you must be hands-free. If you've got voice-activated dialing, it's even better."
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So many loop holes built into all this stuff, well technically you could be writing a novel on your phone but really you shouldn't. The law is a joke and the first time fine is less then half the typical parking ticket, but last time I checked parked cars don't kill people, but distracted drivers do regularly. Texting is shown in some research to impair driving as much or more then being intoxicated.
How about a law, no doing dumb shit in your car that distracts you from driving and putting the fine a little north of a parking ticket, I mean come on.
Ok I already found a good loophole:
So they were saying, for example, you can still type text messages into your GPS because it's not communicating with another person.How about creating a server where you text your message to it along with the intended recipients phone # to the server. The server then interprets it and forwards it to the receiver. Technically you didn't send your text to a person, but you can still text people. Perfect!