Texting law may be tough to enforce

ONEIDA COUNTY, June 1, 2009 -- As of Monday, June 1, texting while driving will be illegal in Oneida County, but how will police deliver that message?

"It's going to be a learning process for us and the community," said Oneida County Sheriff's Department Capt. Richard Antanavige. "...It's probably not something that's going to be a law and we're going to hand out 1,000 tickets the day it happens."

Now that the new law is on the books, there are questions about whether or not it can be enforced and how police are going to go about it.

Brett Rum, 22, of Rome is skeptical about the laws impact on the problem of drivers not paying attention to driving because they are trying to type on the tiny keyboard of a cellphone.  

"I don't think more people will not text while driving," he said. "...They're going to try not to get caught."

Ed Welsh, who supported the bill as a member of the Oneida County Board of Legislators, said police would get better at enforcing the law as they gain experience.

"We have to let them figure it out," Welsh said. "They'll find a way that makes it work. That happens a lot with these new laws. At first they say they don't know how they're going to enforce it. Then, after a while, they find a way."

'IT'S HARD TO PROVE'

 One of the problems with the enforcement is that it's simply hard to detect.

"It's hard to enforce because it's hard to prove," Mike Smith, 39, of Oriskany said.

Andrea McCarthy, a 20-year-old student at Mohawk Valley Community College estimates that 90 percent of the students she knows text while driving. She guesses that number won't change much now that there's a law in place. McCarthy knows it's dangers first-hand. Her sister tipped over in a car while texting and driving. However, McCarthy still catches herself texting and driving once and a while.

The propensity among young people to text and drive is why Welsh said he thought a law was necessary in the first place. He said the proclamation alone will discourage at least some young people.

"I want to teach kids to get them off of some of these bad habits," Welsh said. "We take the most inexperienced drivers, and they're the ones that are most prone to use all of these new technologies... that's a deadly combination."

Welsh added that he recognizes people will hide their phones, and police will have a tough time detecting texting, but, he said, at least there is a law to be enforced.

"Most of the enforcement will be retroactive," he said. "If somebody was texting in a car and got into an accident, there's nothing the police can do now. We want to close that loophole."

Cpt. Antonovige agrees. "

Just by the fact that people don't have the phone up toward their head, it makes it difficult to see," he said. "It's going to be a little different type of enforcement."

COUNTY VS. STATE

Another problem with enforcing the new law is that it's a county-wide law, so people visiting from other counties may not know what the law is. Antanavige said the Sheriff's Department has been doing its due diligence in alerting as many people as possible of the law.

"We've tried to get the word out through various news outlets and some advertising to let people know the law," he said.

Welsh remembers the same thing happened with the cellphone ban a decade ago. In that case, the Counties took the lead and the State later passed legislation. He hopes that'll be the case this time around.

"State's need to pick up the ball when we, at the County level, get these things passed," he said. "That's how it normally works. We don't want it to be a patchwork thing, where it's done here and not there. But, we need to take action first, and then they'll follow our lead."