Driver Gets 2-Year Cell Phone Ban For Killing Cyclist

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A Michigan judge handed down an unusual sentence Wednesday to a woman who struck and killed a bicyclist while she was distracted by her cellphone.

Clinton County District Court Judge Stewart McDonald prohibited 23-year-old Mitzi Nelson from owning or using a mobile device for two years – the term of her probation – after she pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge for her role in the bicyclist’s death last September.

A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt, but is treated as such in sentencing, The Lansing State Journal reports.

Nelson also will be required to speak to 20 driver’s education classes about the dangers of distracted driving, perform 150 hours of community service, serve 90 days in jail, and pay $15,600 in restitution and $1,500 in fines, fees and costs.

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McDonald acknowledged that his authority to revoke cellphone use may be legally challenged, but said the sentence sends an important message, WWJ/CBS Detroit reports.

“I don’t think she has a right to have a cell phone,” McDonald said. “I think it’s a privilege.”

To fulfill her community service requirement, McDonald suggested Nelson consider speaking to school assemblies about how her life and the lives of others were irrevocably changed in the seconds that she took her eyes off the road and looked at her phone.

“If you do that, then maybe that message of deterrence will most emphatically get through,” he said.

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The atypical punishment was actually suggested by Jordan Byelich, whose wife, Jill, was killed while biking north of Lansing near DeWitt last Sept. 2. He and Nelson embraced as she was led from the courtroom to begin serving the first leg of her jail sentence, according to reports.

“I thought the judge thought it through very well and looked at all the factors on both sides,” Jordan Byelich told the Lansing newspaper.

Jill Byelich, the mother of two, was a grant adviser for Michigan State Police.

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Photo Paul Oka via Flickr / Creative Commons