Avid texters beware: Fort Lee, N.J. police said they will begin issuing $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who are caught texting while walking.
“It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware,” said Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department.
Ripoli said the borough, which is home to approximately 35,000 residents, has suffered three fatal pedestrian-involved accidents this year. He hopes his crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking will make his town safer, but not everyone is on board with the idea of issuing $85 tickets.
“When I walk I still look around. I’m not like constantly looking down the whole time,” said resident Sue Choe.
Another woman complained about the tickets were “a lot of money.”
Officers handed out pamphlets during a short grace period in March before they began aggressively going after “dangerous walkers.”
More than 117 tickets have been issued, according to the New Jersey Record.
Two professors at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a study on walking and texting. They found texters are 60 percent more likely to veer off line than non-texters.
“We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting,” Eric Lamberg, co-author of the study, told Long Island Business News. “Texting disrupts your ability much more than does talking.”
(Source: ABC News)
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8 Responses
Is this for texting while walking in general or just for texting while crossing a street?
I knew this day would come.I hope all cities follow ..It’s so dangerous to text & walk . Many times Texters walk in front of a car -without realizing it.
Ikar choseir min hasefer: did the city pass a new law banning this? Or are the police just making this up? Just because something is dangerous doesn’t mean you can charge people with it!
I like this idea! I would love to see it in Los Angeles, but not just for texting but being on the cellphone while crossing the streets. It is very annoying when people are on their phones and not paying attention or walking so slowly, that cars are waiting to turn
Texting while walking.
Someone texting, or perhaps was just reading something, walked into the side of my van yesterday.
I agree totally with this. I’ve been noticing more and more how people are unable to even stay off their talking/texting EVEN while crossing the street! This has become out of control! The danger to all is greatly increased. Anyone who claims tech ology is such a wonderful thing, is completely ignoring the many down sides of it!
I am sure Mike Bloomberg is very upset that he wasn’t the first to come up with a fine for this…
We should learn from this that if one cannot walk a straight line while testing, than reading and responding to text messages in shul, i.e. during chazoras hashatz, Krias haTorah etc. should be a ‘kal v’chomer’.
Let us give the Ribono Shel Olam 40 minutes of our uninterrupted ‘quality time’ by turning the phone off (not even vibrate).