New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Friday that those caught driving and texting would receive an increased penalty of five points on their driving record (up from 3 points), making that “activity” more costly than driving 20 miles over the posted speed limit.
Additionally, Cuomo is proposing a law that would bring harsher penalties to new probationary and junior drivers who would have their license suspended for 60 days after being caught while texting behind the wheel. He went on to add: “We want the message to be very clear to young drivers: Don’t do it and don’t think about doing it. The inexperience plus the distraction can be a deadly combination. And that’s what we want to stop.”
At the press conference was Ben Lieberman whose 19 year old son was killed in a car being driven by a young driver distracted by the use of his cellphone. He said that drivers “need to worry about the lives that are in their hands and not the cellphone in their hands.”
Between 2005 and 2011, the number of mobile phone related crashes in New York rose by 143%.
[Via: PhoneArena, image from TheRockwallNews]