Discussions

if they indeed were not using the phone then go to court and fight the ticket. The same thing happened to me last year and I decided to go to court and actually won my case. I must admit it's pretty scary being there and listening to the officers give their testimony but I went through it all and ended up walking out with no charges.

while i agree distracted driving and cell phone use is an issue but we the laws should be within reason.  
 
It is really hard to defend against an accusation of glancing at your phone, with speeding they do have a screen shot of the radar reading, radar unit number ect, cell phone use unless you are talking on it and the cop requests your phone statement, can be pretty vague proof, eg old guy in winnipeg without owning a cell, with higher and higher penalties it seems that proven guilty with actual evidence should be more of a priority  
 
 
ps trvor, I have 1/2 dozen vehicles for work and pleasure and NONE of them have bluetooth calls, No excuse but dont assume everyone has a vehicle that does

Agreed about the whole comment about not all vehicles being equipped with built in Bluetooth.  
 
Those are all EXTRA features someone can get for their vehicle and not everyone has that. Also not everyone has the newest vehicles on the market either. Yes we could go out and buy devices for our ears but some of those actually suck and hurt my ears. I’ve just chosen to leave my phone in my purse, in the back seat. Nothing is more important than making sure I am paying attention to the road and surroundings while I am driving.  
 
If someone is trying to call or text me, it can wait until I am fully stopped some where safe. (Not in traffic at red lights or stop signs).

~BooBoo~ said "Agreed about the whole comment about not all vehicles being equipped with built in Bluetooth.     Those are all EXTRA features someone can get for their vehicle and not everyone has that. Also not everyone has the newest vehicles on the market either. Yes we could go out and buy devices for our ears but some of those actually suck and hurt my ears. I’ve just chosen to leave my phone in my purse, in the back seat. Nothing is more important than making sure I am paying attention to the road and surroundings while I am driving.     If someone is trying to call or text me, it can wait until I am fully stopped some where safe. (Not in traffic at red lights or stop signs). "

i agree, when texting was new i tried texting once when i was driving and realized how horrible it was and I DO NOT text and drive, however i am not perfect an under the law i could be charged, things i do  
 
hand my phone to my passenger so they can check the text or answer the call  
 
glance at the time on my phone at a light (the position i sit in usually i cant see a few of my clocks)  
 
turn off a call so its not distracting me,i know i could mute before i get into the car but im in and out a lot so id miss important business if i forgot to un-mute  
 
now I realize thats not the law and i could do other things to stop that urge but generally the things i do isnt as distracting as other things that are legal or NEVER enforced so yes I would get citizen points deducted off me if I were in china but do we really want to go that far? haha  
 
I also Think if they are going to up the penalties with cell phone use they should have a tired system depending on the offense, like speeding does, because honestly who believes that glancing at your phone at a light or passing it to the passenger is the same as texting driving down the road?

The meth and hard drug problem gets worse and worse and our police force is prioritizing setting up elaborate stings for catching people on cell phones. Not enough revenue generation in the drug busting trade I suppose.

.....I'm all for it with the police clamping down on cell phone use while driving. I don't know anything important enough for someone to play chicken with my life......

Stay off your phones when driving !!  
 
Very easy !!  
 
Maybe not so easy for certain age groups.  
Grow up.  
 
People aren’t getting the message so the punishment is increasing.  
 
Instead of trying to figure out a loophole in the law.... put your phone in the trunk and drive all u want !!  
 
Sickening how attached people are to their phones. Totally out of hand.  
 
Long time coming for this blitz on distracted drivers.  
 
 
How do u avoid speeding tickets ?  
Slow down  
 
How du u avoid distracted driving tickets ?  
Leave the phone at home or lock in the trunk.

Alvin Hansen said "Considering that virtually ALL vehicle head units are now Bluetooth enabled, it puzzles me why ANYONE would continue to use a cell phone by itself. "

I wondered this as well then realized, you can't bluetooth Facebook/Snapchat etc - and so many people are addicted to social media they can't stop looking at it even when driving.

thevoiceofreason said "The meth and hard drug problem gets worse and worse and our police force is prioritizing setting up elaborate stings for catching people on cell phones. Not enough revenue generation in the drug busting trade I suppose. "

there is always a comment like this.  
 
Perhaps you should educate yourself about traffic enforcement and drug related arrests et al.

Robbie said "Unfortunately you have just opened the door for all those that just lurk around here waiting to complain about anything and everything.   Distracted driving is a horribly serious problem that it costing people their lives, and it has been getting worse.     Rest assured your friend was seen using their phone by a police officer. They have various ways of confirming that which I will not tell.   The way it is now a ticket is $200. but the demerits will cost a person about $12,000.oo over the next 12 years. A second ticket will cost them around $30,000.oo over the next 20 years.   Starting soon the offender will in addition have their licence suspended 1st offence 3 days second 7 days. Add to this the cost of having the vehicle towed away to storage as you can not drive it home and it can't stay on the street. Another $400-500. "

I was just wondering how you figure that it would cost 12000 over 12 years?  
Say if you had 0 demerits and got your first distracted driving charge you would go down to 5 demerits. which would take your license from 65 to 470 dollars for the first year, then 220 for the second then back to 65 for the 3rd year and you would have 1 merit after 4 years.  
So 4 years would cost you 815 dollars for your license,  
VS if you had a completely clean driving record (65 first year, 60 second, 55 third and 50 for the fourth) so 230 dollars.  
So it would cost you 585 dollars extra over 4 years unless Im missing something?

thevoiceofreason said "The meth and hard drug problem gets worse and worse and our police force is prioritizing setting up elaborate stings for catching people on cell phones. Not enough revenue generation in the drug busting trade I suppose. "

I'm glad the police are cracking down on distracted driving. I had a car speed up on me while crossing at a crosswalk with my child - we ran and just made it across - then noticed the girl was texting. Just because there is one big problem in society (meth) doesn't mean all other laws get put on the backburner...oh forget it - let people text and drive and kill everyone, we got meth to deal with . pffft.

I was given a ticket for this once in error. I tried explaining to the officer that I was holding my wallet in my hand. I had just got gas and had a bad habit of resting elbow on arm rest and still had wallet in had because I HATE sitting on it. I even offered him my phone so he could look through the call records and txt to see that I was not using it. He just told me to take it to court. I asked if he had a dash cam that I would be able to request the video of. Would not hear any of it just gave me the ticket and told me if I wanted to fight it to take it to court.  
 
While I agree no one should be using cell while driving it was very frustrating thinking of all the implications of the ticket that was given in error and the officer didn't care at all that he may have been wrong.

I saw a man shaving with a hand held shaver driving down 18th once!

no one i know drives like that. i drive with one hand...just like everyone else.

GTLRvs said "    Robbie said "Unfortunately you have just opened the door for all those that just lurk around here waiting to complain about anything and everything.   Distracted driving is a horribly serious problem that it costing people their lives, and it has been getting worse.     Rest assured your friend was seen using their phone by a police officer. They have various ways of confirming that which I will not tell.   The way it is now a ticket is $200. but the demerits will cost a person about $12,000.oo over the next 12 years. A second ticket will cost them around $30,000.oo over the next 20 years.   Starting soon the offender will in addition have their licence suspended 1st offence 3 days second 7 days. Add to this the cost of having the vehicle towed away to storage as you can not drive it home and it can't stay on the street. Another $400-500. " I was just wondering how you figure that it would cost 12000 over 12 years?   Say if you had 0 demerits and got your first distracted driving charge you would go down to 5 demerits. which would take your license from 65 to 470 dollars for the first year, then 220 for the second then back to 65 for the 3rd year and you would have 1 merit after 4 years.   So 4 years would cost you 815 dollars for your license,   VS if you had a completely clean driving record (65 first year, 60 second, 55 third and 50 for the fourth) so 230 dollars.   So it would cost you 585 dollars extra over 4 years unless Im missing something? "

It would also depend on if you already had merits. Lets say you had 6 merits, and get a 5 demerit penalty for distracted driving. For this example, we will assume your full undiscounted rate is 2500. Year one, you lose 15% discount. That is 375 extra. Year two, you would have had 7 merits, but you now have 2, still a 15% loss, so now 750 total. But you NEVER catch up (until you hit 15 Merits), and will always be 5 levels behind. Not sure where the 12000 comes from, but over 4 years under this example, autopac alone would be $1650 more. The difference does start dropping from 15% as you climb the scale, but it will cost you more every year, till you finally hit 15 positive points. I would not cost you more on autopac, but if you were already negative on the scale, it would cost you a lot more on the licence part. If you were at minus 10 to start, this drop would cost you 6800 extra on your license over 4 years.

It would take you 10 yrs to get back to 0 as you only get a merit for every 2yrs of accident or ticket free driving.  
Then it takes you an additional 10 yrs to get to +5 merits that you would have been if you hadn't gotten that distracted driving ticket 20 yrs ago ! And that's just your drivers licence.  
Now you have MPIC figure 10 yrs that you could have had 30% discount and 10 yrs of 15-30% discount.  
And what if you get a second distracted driving ticket? What if you get a second vehicle or motorcycle or snowmobile?  
Bottom line: you put yourself in a difficult financial situation for the rest of your life.  
If you use actual figures it comes to a lot more than 12,000.00 for one ticket

RC123 said "I was taught 10 and 2 so likely won’t change.     Bottom line is if both hands are up and on the wheel you won’t give them reason to give you a ticket. Distracted driving does not necessarily mean texting "

Changed to 9 & 3 so if you're in an accident your head doesn't smash your knuckles, or at least that's what we were taught in driver ed.

And on top of all that you have to factor in the cost of insurance increasing over the next 20 years.

If you''re in the negatives and have demerits every 1 year of clean driving moves you back up much faster and depends how far down the scale you are.  
 
On the other side of this scale, if you have +3 and drive 1 year without accidents then you only go up 1.  
 
If you are at -20 it only takes 5 years of clean driving to get back to 0, from there it takes 15 years to get to +15.  
 
Direct from MPI website.  
 
https://www.mpi.mb.ca/en/DL/DL/DSR/Pages/howthedsrworks.aspx  
 
Edited by Suckie, 2018-04-13 12:55:28

Knucklehead said "    RC123 said "I was taught 10 and 2 so likely won’t change.     Bottom line is if both hands are up and on the wheel you won’t give them reason to give you a ticket. Distracted driving does not necessarily mean texting " Changed to 9 & 3 so if you're in an accident your head doesn't smash your knuckles, or at least that's what we were taught in driver ed. "

it's so the airbags don't come in contact with your forearms when they go off

Same as any other "witnessed" offense (eg: running a stop sign), the officer will write up a report saying what he saw and where he was viewing from. Then if necessary, he will go to court and repeat that report under oath.  
 
Officers are assumed to be honest, and the burden of overturning that report is on the defendant. I'm not a lawyer, but I would assume the best defense would be taking pictures of the scene from the position of the officer, and trying to argue that the officer's viewing angle wasn't sufficient to justify the charge, assuming that seems like a valid argument.  
 
Essentially, your friend would have to convince a judge that the officer made a mistake, and conditions/positioning is probably the most likely way to make that argument effectively.  
 
If your friend was spotted at close range on a clear day, or from above via transit, their chances of convincing the judge the officer made a mistake are probably pretty slim.

Thanks for the correction. I have never been negative, so I figured it worked the same as when you were positive (1/year). My number in the positive work - scrap the numbers in the negatives.

thevoiceofreason said "The meth and hard drug problem gets worse and worse and our police force is prioritizing setting up elaborate stings for catching people on cell phones. Not enough revenue generation in the drug busting trade I suppose. "

Yeah. It would be so much better if police only centered on one type of crime at a time. Maybe they could put out a schedule of what type of crime they're fighting this month - or ... maybe they should stop charging people for anything until that pesky meth problem is under control.  
 
Cop: "I'm sorry sir your wife was killed by a distracted driver when she was trying to cross the street - but we won't be looking into the incident until this darn meth is under control!"  
 
*eyeroll*

thevoiceofreason said "The meth and hard drug problem gets worse and worse and our police force is prioritizing setting up elaborate stings for catching people on cell phones. Not enough revenue generation in the drug busting trade I suppose. "

Do you ever look at the Brandon Police Services daily media releases, because the police regularly arrest people who have drugs, including meth on them and drug dealers, among people committing other crimes. Quite often those arrest are a result of a traffic stop. Just because the police are pulling people over for using their cell phones or any other traffic violation doesn't mean that the police aren't also fighting crime. Plus different units of the police service focus on different issues. Like the traffic unit focuses on traffic enforcement, impaired driving and accident investigations among other issues related to traffic. Then theirs a unit that focuses on drugs and organized crime and investigate drug dealers. Then you have general patrol that deals with everything that happens on the street.  
 
Reality is you can be killed by drugs and you can be killed by a distracted driver. Happens everyday. Im glade we have a police force focussing on both issues.

Robbie said "It would take you 10 yrs to get back to 0 as you only get a merit for every 2yrs of accident or ticket free driving.   Then it takes you an additional 10 yrs to get to +5 merits that you would have been if you hadn't gotten that distracted driving ticket 20 yrs ago ! And that's just your drivers licence.   Now you have MPIC figure 10 yrs that you could have had 30% discount and 10 yrs of 15-30% discount.   And what if you get a second distracted driving ticket? What if you get a second vehicle or motorcycle or snowmobile?   Bottom line: you put yourself in a difficult financial situation for the rest of your life.   If you use actual figures it comes to a lot more than 12,000.00 for one ticket "

https://www.mpi.mb.ca/en/DL/DL/DSR/Pages/howthedsrworks.aspx  
They changed the DSR system a couple years ago, You actually recieve 1 merit for every year of safe driving. However when you are in the negative you gain then back alot faster, as i said from 5 demerits it takes you 3 years to get back to 0 and the 4th year you would actaully have 1 merit. Check out there calculator on there site.  
Im not defending distracted driving by any means its a big problem and needs to be taken seriously forsure.

Considering that virtually ALL vehicle head units are now Bluetooth enabled, it puzzles me why ANYONE would continue to use a cell phone by itself.

Alvin Hansen said "Considering that virtually ALL vehicle head units are now Bluetooth enabled, it puzzles me why ANYONE would continue to use a cell phone by itself. "

I never text and drive.....but I also cannot afford a new fancy vehicle.  
 
There is not reason to even have to text, talk on a phone when driving. But today's society is all about "me" and not about laws, watching out for anyone else and what might happen if you are texting and in an accident.  
 
Just think of the accidents and deaths caused my texting and driving.  
 
Sad really.

Alvin Hansen said "Considering that virtually ALL vehicle head units are now Bluetooth enabled, it puzzles me why ANYONE would continue to use a cell phone by itself. "

it doesnt even matter if a vehical does because you can pull over or wait but really, ALL vehicles have bluetooth? think for just a second please

Plain clothes ppl whocall them to pull suspects over , we could drive and go on phone and laptops but we're not them

Just a though, but get a dashcam that is pointed at the driver and records all that they do, where their hands go, devices that are in view, etc. Make sure that you have the date/time stamp turned on. If you are erroneously charged, now you have evidence that you were not using your device at that time.