Fewer Sonoma County drivers cited for using phones, but the problem hasn’t gone away

Traffic officers in Santa Rosa and Petaluma caught an average of eight drivers a day texting or otherwise using cellphones during the first half of April.

A statistician could crunch the numbers to extrapolate how many drivers are using cellphones on the roads, but local police officers don’t need equations to know too many drivers are distracted out there.

“I drive around when I’m off duty and everybody is texting or talking on the phone. I am up in a truck so I can see it,” Petaluma Police Sgt. Jim Stephenson said. “People seriously have no idea. If you’re talking on the phone it’s like driving with a … DUI.”

Translation: It’s like a 120-pound person knocked back three or four drinks. Stephenson is referring to a New England Journal of Medicine study that found drivers using mobile phones were four times more likely to crash than motorists without phones or other distractions - the same risk of driving with a 0.10 blood-alcohol level.

Throughout April, traffic officers are out in force on certain days on Sonoma County roads looking for drivers on cellphones for a special enforcement effort to curb distracted driving behaviors.

So far, Petaluma police have issued citations to 12 texting drivers as well as 45 drivers for using cellphones in other ways during the first 15 days of April, Stephenson said.

In Santa Rosa, traffic officers have pulled over and cited seven drivers for texting, 62 drivers for other cellphone violations as well as one teenage driver for using a cellphone, a specific violation under California’s vehicle code, Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Mike Numainville said. These numbers are higher than the average for other times of year because of a state grant that supports the overtime pay to put officers on the streets for special enforcement efforts.

Statewide, the number of overall tickets paid for illegally using a cellphone while driving have plummeted by nearly 25 percent over the past three years, according to data collected by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Officers were handing out much fewer citations for holding cellphones and talking on them. They handed out 329,575 citations for hand-held phone use in 2014 compared to 460,487 in 2011.

But the number of citations paid for texting violations almost doubled over that same three-year period: From 14,886 texting tickets in 2011 to 29,633 in 2014.

The numbers do not include when citations were issued but the driver did not ultimately have to pay the fines or penalty assessments, such as when a person fights the citation in court, according to traffic safety office spokesman Chris Cochran.

They illuminate a variety of changes - officers are better trained to tell when a person is texting, police departments are rebuilding traffic units after years of budget cuts, and the younger generations who have never listened to a voice mail but text all day and night are getting their driver’s licenses.

“The days of seeing everybody holding the phone up to their ears are nearly over,” Numainville said. “They’re sneakier about it. Unfortunately they’re still distracted.”

Numainville said that some drivers have truly curbed their cellphone use in the car in response to public education campaigns.

Complicating matters for traffic patrols, the 5th District Court of Appeal published an opinion in 2014 that California’s cellphone laws were too broad and that drivers can use smartphone maps.

“I don’t want to say it’s discouraged enforcement, it’s just made enforcement tough because you indeed need to be able to see the violation, like with texting,” Rohnert Park Public Safety Department Traffic Sgt. Aaron Johnson said.

Rohnert Park officers are also assigning patrol officers on special days to focus on distracted driving violations like cellphone use, although they had not yet compiled the number of tickets issued so far.

Although it may be legal for a driver to pull up a smartphone to map their destination, that doesn’t make it legal to weave in and out of lanes, drive through stop signs or travel far below the speed limit simply because a driver’s looking at a map.

“It doesn’t give people amnesty to drive with mobile device in their hand,” Johnson said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemo?crat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.