It's July 1st, New CA Cell Phone & Driving Law Begins

In a couple minutes, one full day of the newly enforced California hands free cell phone useage law will have passed.

Lucky for me, today I spent more time than usual on SoCal's freeway system. Lots of customers to visit, even more errands than usual tasken to task. This means I was able to witness first hand if the new law was having any effect on people's driving and cell phone usage habits.

Initial observations of the new "hands free cell phone" law; I don't see much of a change. People of all types are still holding the cell phone up to their ears and in front of their faces dialing or texting.

But what I did see gave me some hope in the long term.

There were many CA Highway Patrol officers pulling over a lot more drivers than usual. I don't mean one here and another there. I mean in one stretch of Interstate 5 south of downtown LA, I saw 9 CHP cruisers that had pulled over cars. Each officer in this mile of so stretch was either in deep discussion with the driver, or else he/she was in the process of issuing a citation. I saw similar activity on the 101, 210 and 405 freeways as well.

I had my suspicions confirmed a little bit ago when I saw a news story on TV outlining the CHP's activities enforcing the new law today. The on camera talking head spokesman said that citations issues were estimated to be up 300% for a single day average, which the CHP attributes to drivers not obeying the new law.

No duhhhh!