Greenwich Police To Ramp-Up Enforcement For Distracted Driving

GREENWICH, CT — The Greenwich Police Department will ramp-up enforcement throughout April for Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

Last week, the Connecticut Department of Transportation Highway Safety Office launched U Drive. U Text. U Pay., a national high-visibility enforcement campaign for the month of April.

"Pay attention while driving," said Greenwich police Lt. Martin O'Reilly. "Focus on the roadway and the traffic and pedestrians. Focus more on what's going on outside of your car than what's going on inside of your car."

In Connecticut in 2020, according to the CT DOT, there were nearly 5,000 crashes attributed to distracted driving.

"It has become all too common to see people driving while looking at their phones," said Connecticut Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti in a news release last week. "People know that texting and driving is extremely dangerous and illegal, but they continue to do it anyway. These habits are putting motorists and passengers, pedestrians, bikers and all road users at risk. Every driver in Connecticut has a responsibility to drive safe."

Since 2015, Connecticut has been measuring rates of distracted driving. August 2021 saw the highest rate of drivers either texting or talking on a hand-held cell phone since the first round of observations in March 2015.

"A serious or fatal crash can happen in an instant," Giulietti added. "Distracted driving crashes are preventable. Driving should be a person’s number one priority behind the wheel. Remember, everything else can wait."

According to the law in Connecticut, the fine for distracted driving is $200 for the first offense, $375 for the second offense, and $625 for the third and subsequent offenses.

Between 2012 and 2019, 26,004 people died in crashes involving a distracted driver, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

While fatalities from motor vehicle crashes decreased slightly from 2018, distraction-related fatalities increased by 10 percent. NHTSA also reported that the number of deaths linked to driver distraction was 3,142 nationwide, or almost 9 percent of all fatalities, in 2019. This represents a 10 percent increase over the year 2018, or 284 more fatalities. The distraction figure was the largest increase in causes of traffic deaths reported for 2019.