This is interesting, isn’t it?
Is distracted driving the new drunk driving? Numerous studies in the past few years have warned motorists of the dangers of driving while distracted – the most common distraction being texting.
Distracted driving kills over eight people per day and injures another 1,000, a phenomenon that has gradually increased over the last 10 years. Some even claim that texting while driving is just as bad as driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
In New York alone, texting while driving tickets have increased exponentially from 9,000 in 2011 to almost 85,000 in 2015. In light of recent efforts by anti-distracted driving activists, New York legislators have proposed a bill called Evan’s Law, named after young car accident victim who died in 2011 because the driver of the vehicle that hit him was distracted by his phone.
The new law would give police officers the authority to use new technology called a “Textalyzer” when they pull motorists over for suspected distracted driving.
Commonly referred to as “the new breathalyzer,” the Textalyzer was developed by the mobile forensics company Cellebrite, which uses a series of new technological developments to determine whether or not a motorist had been texting while driving.
In real time, an officer can plug a motorist’s phone into a laptop and use the system’s operating logs to determine whether or not the person was typing or tapping the phone’s screen at the time of a crash. The use of this new technology, legislators hope, will force motorists to think twice before pulling out their phones while driving.
The main concerns over the Textalyzer legislation surround privacy laws. Proponents of the Textalyzer insist that the device is programmed to only show if the phone was in use for texting at the time of an accident, not to access the owner’s photos, conversations, contacts, or other personal information.
However, some civil liberties groups, including the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), acknowledge the public safety issue regarding distracted driving, but say that the Textalyzer is “fraught with legal and practical problems.”
Other opponents of the bill say that there are less intrusive measures already in place to determine phone usage at the time of accidents, such as encrypting the phone or scanning the phone’s metadata.
Defense attorney Karin Riley Porter commented, “The proposed legislation and the advent of the Textalyzer are proof that distracted driving has become an enormous public safety issue in recent years. However, privacy laws are still a concern, and maintaining the balance between reducing distracted driving fatalities and protecting individual privacy will continue.”
