Holding a phone while driving is illegal in Alabama, yet people in Huntsville can regularly be seen doing it. Nearly every week while waiting to pick up my daughter from school, I witness someone texting and driving through the active school zone. This month, I saw two drivers in a row on their phones while driving through the school zone.
Today, I set up my camera along Jordan Ln (just before the intersection of Bob Wallace) to see how long it would take before I could catch someone texting and driving.
32 seconds. It took me just 32 seconds of recording to catch someone texting and driving.
The image is a little hard to see, but the slim rectangular shape is very distinctive. I caught a distracted driver on his phone after only 32 seconds of recording traffic.
This was not a fluke.
I recorded traffic for exactly 6 minutes, and in those 6 minutes, I caught 4 people holding their phone while driving. Thats an average of one distracted driver every 90 seconds. This was recorded at ~3:20pm, so not exactly peak rush hour traffic.
These are just the people I could see. Many cars have dark tinted windows that make it impossible to see the driver. These tints are likely illegal, as Alabama law only allow driver window tint as low as 32%.
Pitch black tint is illegal in Alabama for good reason. With this tint, drivers can text and drive without being seen. This makes it harder to catch distracted drivers. This is not just an issue for law enforcement, but also an issue for pedestrians. When a pedestrian can not see the driver, he can not know if he is seen by the driver, making crossing an intersection more dangerous. Will you feel safe walking in front of a car if you aren’t sure the driver sees you or not? Tinted driver windows make it more dangerous for pedestrians to simply cross a road.
What can be done?
More enforcement of our laws. I would seek much stronger enforcement of both illegal car tints and illegal phone use while driving. This can be done with more police patrolling roads, but to fully tackle this problem within our budget, we need traffic cameras that monitor speed and distracted driving. This especially needs to be done within school zones and roads children cross to attend school.
Speed cameras are proven to make streets safer. Traffic cameras can be monitored live at multiple intersections at the same time. An officer can watch a video feed of multiple school zones at once, witness drivers who are texting and driving through the school zone, and write tickets that are sent to the driver through the mail.
Current alabama law fines distracted drivers only $50, $100, $150 for a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd offense. I would seek to double or triple those fines.
Driving is a privilege, a privilege that injures over 36,000 people every single year in Alabama. Distracted driving is not something we should take lightly, especially in school zones.
Huntsville needs a serious crackdown on distracted driving that makes our roads so dangerous. Safer streets are my number 1 priority. If you also want to see our streets become safer, please consider donating to my campaign for Huntsville city council district 4. Together, we can make Huntsville a safer place to live.