Chicago DUI attorney comments on the need for new laws

This Chicago DUI attorney has posted here, here, and here about distracted driving.

She’s highlighted what commonsense ought to tell us anyhow, that folks continually being distracted while driving is not limited to the perils of texting while driving.

Heck, several years ago I had a client who was charged with a DUI.  He was acquitted.  Guess what caused the “poor driving” that cause the police officer to stop my client?  No, it wasn’t drinking.  Try again if you think he was texting while driving.  Nope, he wasn’t talking on his cell phone either.  Well, scroll down to the bottom to see what caused his “poor driving, but in the meantime, maybe there’s someone else who can more eloquently explain the perils of creating laws to single out texting over other forms of distracted driving.

From suntimes.com:

When Lora Hunt of Morris smashed into and killed motorcyclist Anita Zaffke in May of 2009 while painting her finergnails [sic], she illustrated a little-known fact: most distracted driving accidents have nothing to do with cell phones.

While more attention has been paid to drivers talking or texting with their cell phones, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says just a fraction of the 5,474 people killed and 448,000 injured in crashes involving distracted driving last year were because of cell phone use.

The NHTSA says only 18 percent of the fatalities and 5 percent of the injuries were cell phone related.

People love to eat in their cars. They can't resist fiddling with the CD player or the radio, chatting with passengers, patting their pets or turning around to get after the kids in the back seat while hurtling down the interstate.

"I don't think we've made nearly as much progress in those other areas of distracted driving," says Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

He says the nation's vehicles and highway systems are so well-designed; they've helped create complacency among many drivers.

"In some sense we've made things too safe, and people get lulled into this sense of complacency," he says. "The system is fundamentally so safe that most of the time when people do these things, they get away with them."

There you have it.  So what caused my client’s “poor driving”?  He was arguing with his wife.  Today’s free legal advice is never, ever argue while driving.  Yes.  It is another form of distracted driving.  Somehow, I don't believe the legislators are rushing to put a no arguing while driving law on the books.