Violations Of Texting-While-Driving Not Often Enforced In Florida
Governor Ron DeSantis made texting while driving a primary traffic offense in our state back in 2019.
For the first offense, it’s a $30 fine. But here’s the strange thing. It’s a law that is not often enforced. Enforcers who are writing tickets claim the law has too many loopholes.
And there’s another problem. Counties don’t seem to keep an accurate count of the number of violations.
For example, Florida’s “census of texting” is missing tickets altogether from in excess of 20 of the state’s 67 sheriff’s departments and at least 56 of 155 police departments.
When further investigation was done into other departments, for instance in Broward, it was discovered that only 18 people were ticketed in one year. To add some perspective, Broward is a county of nearly 2 million people. In Alachua County, campus police at the University of Florida didn’t issue any texting-while-driving citations.
When you look at last year’s figures for the entire state of Florida, you’ll see only 3,410 texting-while-driving citations were written.
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