State Senator James Holzapfel proposed a new law in New Jersey that aims to root out distracted driving caused by using the phone while driving. The new law would allow traffic enforcers, police officers, and investigators to search the phones of people involved in traffic accidents if there were sufficient grounds to suspect that they were using the apparatus while driving, which may have led to the accident.
Police would first have to establish a probable cause since they wouldn't be allowed to suddenly sift through your phone calls, texts, and other digital communications media just because. You would expect them to check licenses and registration first. However, if they were to find reasonable grounds to suspect that the driver was distracted by the use of the phone while driving, the new law would empower officers to seize your device and delve in to find evidence. They would check your most recent messages and call logs, among others.
While well-intentioned, the new law faces more than a few obstacles. Does it violate any constitutional rights of the people involved in the accident, particularly rights to privacy? After the PRISM hullabaloo, privacy concerns are a hot topic again. Can finding recent messages and phone calls during the time of the accident really prove that it caused the accident? State and federal laws require probable cause before authorizing a search of any kind, and here lies another problem: what qualifies as probable cause in this case?
Distracted driving caused by phones and other mobile devices has been increasingly drawing much needed attention in recent years. Some research material suggests that even hands-free texting can be just as risky as drunk driving. With the skyrocketing adoption of smartphones and tablets, the problem of texting (or calling) while driving is starting to receive spotlight attention from policy makers and legislators concerned over increased traffic accidents and fatalities because of driver distraction.
While drunk driving seems to be more of a teenage problem, distracted driving is more a problem for adults, where research points out that texting while driving makes you 23 times more at risk for accidents.