State Trooper Steve Schatzel was in Camas recently when he saw a man driving with a cell phone held to his ear. So Schatzel pulled him over.
“I said, ‘Do you know why I stopped you?’ He goes, ‘Cell phone?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’”
Since June 10 of last year, police officers can stop drivers they see talking on cell phones or texting, with no other violation necessary. And the driver who Schatzel stopped didn’t try making any excuses.
“He knew he was doing wrong, and he took responsibility for it,” said Schatzel, a veteran trooper with the Washington State Patrol working in Clark County.
The man drove away with a ticket for $124.
About seven months have elapsed since the Washington Legislature added sharper teeth to the chatting and texting laws, making them primary violations.
And folks know — especially in Clark County — that chatting and texting are major distractions for drivers.
A texting driver killed popular Hudson’s Bay High School teacher Gordon Patterson in September 2009, as Patterson rode his bicycle in a marked bike lane. The driver got a five-year prison sentence.
The way to avoid such accidents is to use common sense, police say.
“We need to cut down on our distractions and pay attention to our driving,” Schatzel said.
Nonetheless, it’s still easy to spot drivers chatting away on their cells, as readers of The Columbian also have reported.
And that raises the question of whether police are enforcing the new chatting and texting laws, along with their other duties.
The answer is yes, say employees with every police agency in Clark County — and an employee of Clark County District Court, where tickets issued by several local police agencies are resolved, and where records of them are kept .
In Clark County from June 10 through Dec. 31, troopers wrote about 395 tickets for driving while chatting, DWCHAT. Troopers also issued 176 verbal warnings, said Dan Coon, a WSP spokesman in Olympia.
Statewide, troopers wrote 3,976 tickets for DWCHAT in that time period.
Chatting while driving first became illegal in July 2008, as a secondary violation requiring police to first identify another violation such as speeding. Since then, the WSP’s ticketing for DWCHAT has increased markedly, from 34 in Clark County in 2008 to 418 for 2010.
Widening the focus to encompass WSP’s District 5, headquartered in Vancouver, troopers issued 481 tickets for DWCHAT from June 10 through Dec. 31. District 5 includes Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Skamania and Klickitat counties.
By comparison, Coon said, District 5 troopers stopped 26,236 speeders in the same time period and made 1,066 DUI arrests.
Vancouver police, sheriff’s deputies and officers with the smaller cities also are on board.
“I know we’ve been enforcing it, in patrol as well as in the traffic unit,” said Sgt. Kathy McNicholas with the Vancouver Police Department.
Last year, from January through September, Vancouver officers wrote 258 tickets for driving while chatting and driving while texting combined, a district court employee said.
Deputies with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office wrote 154 tickets. Camas police wrote 95 and Washougal police wrote 30, court records say.
Battle Ground police report issuing 52 tickets for chatting last year and two for texting. Ridgefield police issued 17 for chatting last year after the violations became primary and one for texting.
In La Center, officers issued 10 tickets for driving while chatting last year after June 10, and none for texting, police said.
Tougher to enforce
Tickets for driving while texting are far fewer than for driving while chatting — and are likely to stay that way until cars get glass doors.
“It’s a lot harder to see,” Coon said. “People are getting smarter and putting (the cell phone) down lower than we can see.”
Experts consider driving while texting to be extremely dangerous.
Many texting drivers use both hands to hold their phone and punch in numbers, taking their eyes off the road while trying to control the steering wheel with their fingers and knees, an officer said.
State troopers wrote only 16 tickets for DWTEXT in Clark County all of last year, compared to 418 for DWCHAT.
But WSP Sgt. Randy Hullinger did spot a texting driver recently and issued a ticket to her, Trooper Schatzel said.
Hullinger is very tall and was driving a large Ford Crown Victoria patrol car, so he was able to look from a downward angle at the texting driver.
“He could see the cell phone and he could see her thumbs going to town,” Schatzel said. “It was more digits than a phone number, so he stopped her for texting.”
The anti-chatting and anti-texting laws, RCW 46.61.667 and .668, prohibit driving while “holding a wireless communications device to his or her ear,” but do not prohibit punching in a cell phone number while driving.
Driving while chatting on a cell phone is so distracting that it’s more dangerous than driving while legally drunk, according to one study.
Studies have found that texting drivers look down at their phones for five seconds at a time on average, enough time at highway speeds to travel the length of a football field.
Studies say texting drivers are six to 23 times more likely to crash or nearly crash.
Drivers younger than 20 were the largest age group of distracted drivers in fatal crashes in 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Even though officers in Clark County are enforcing the chatting and texting laws, it appears that many drivers continue to violate them, just as drivers continue to speed and follow too closely behind other vehicles despite police enforcement. Such drivers are causing rear-end collisions, the most common type on local highways and freeways.
The many crashes that ensue, and the injuries and monetary costs, are preventable with better driving, officials say.
John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.
