Quick Take
Santa Cruz County drivers face stricter fines thanks to a recent court ruling against handheld cellphone use. Local law enforcement and cycling advocates say the tighter rules are welcome in a county where distracted driving is "a very big deal."
Attention all drivers: No more phone-y business. A California appellate court ruling earlier this month clarified the question of when it’s all right for drivers to use a cellphone while behind the wheel.
The court’s decision has finally settled the question people in a rush have not had the time to ponder — can I hold my phone and use Google or Apple Maps safely while driving?
The answer is no, according to a ruling earlier this year by the 6th District Court of Appeal in San Jose. The defendant in the case, Nathaniel Porter, was pulled over for holding his phone in his left hand while running a maps application. He was fined $158. Porter challenged the ticket, arguing he was not “operating” the phone as defined in the California Vehicle Code.
The new ruling defines “operating” to mean using a maps app or any other function while driving. The only exception is if the device is in a dashboard mounted phone-holder and voice-activated, then one touch or swipe is allowed to set up the activation— although the definition of “one touch” and the length of time between touches remains unclear.
“This interpretation conforms with the spirit of the act to prevent distracted driving stemming from modern phone use and to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road,” wrote the panel of judges.
“Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. It will save lives, maybe your own,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosen, who brought the case to the appellate court, wrote in a statement to Lookout.
Drivers on their phones are a “very big deal” in Santa Cruz County, said Israel Murillo, spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol, which oversees state highways and local roads in unincorporated parts of the county.
Murillo wants to remind drivers that under the new ruling from the court, you cannot touch your phone when driving along for any reason, unless it’s mounted, or you will be subject to a ticket from the CHP. California sets a first infraction at $20, but it can go higher than $285 depending on the jurisdiction and number of infractions.
Scrolling through your phone at a red traffic light or stop sign is also not allowed.
“We see people when they go to stop signs or stop lights, they turn on their phone and start operating it, which you can’t do,” Murillo said.
Drivers drift into unprotected bike lanes across Santa Cruz County all the time, and many of them appear to be distracted by their phones, said Matt Miller, director of mobility transformation at nonprofit Ecology Action. He’s developed a sense of when a driver is exhibiting distracted behavior. Riding his bike on Soquel Avenue, Miller was almost hit, and when he pulled up beside the car he saw the driver looking down at his phone.
People’s biggest fear when driving is other drivers on their phones and other distractions, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety’s 2024 survey. Nearly three-quarters of Californians surveyed cited distracted drivers as a top concern.
In Santa Cruz County, 165 bicyclists and 94 pedestrians were injured in car crashes in 2022, the most recent year with data available, though not all were related to phone use or distracted driving. A new survey from Bike Santa Cruz County, a cyclist advocacy group, said 89% of respondents had experienced a near-miss in the past year.
A countywide crash report identifying the number of bicyclist- and pedestrian-related car crashes by jurisdiction over a decade from 2014 to 2024 will be released next week, according to Kelly Curlett, Santa Cruz County Community Traffic Safety Coalition staff member. But data on the number of crashes caused by distracted driving is hard to pinpoint.
There are three types of studied distraction in car crashes: visual distraction (eyes off the road), cognitive distraction (mind off reality) and manual distraction (hands off the wheel), said Julia Griswold, director of the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center.
All are present in cellphone-related crashes, but only 3% of traffic fatalities in California are routinely identified as distraction-related, according to Griswold. That’s because it’s hard to identify the role a phone plays in a crash after the fact, unless the police access the phone or a witness comes forward.
“Maybe you convince yourself like, ‘I’m really good at multitasking. I can drive anywhere, anytime and also flip through my phone,'” Miller said. “If you mess up, it could be the difference of somebody living or dying, or being injured and having their lives completely altered.”
California’s driving law has evolved with time and technology to prevent drivers distracted by their phones from causing havoc on the roads. In 2006, the California Wireless Telephone Automobile Safety Act banned telephone calls, but smartphones continued to proliferate, making that prohibition outdated.
The state passed a broader law in 2016 to explicitly forbid other potential uses of smartphones while driving, including GPS, video streaming and photography, according to the court’s decision. The court’s decision reaffirms the law’s original intent to outlaw all uses when operating a phone.
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