[POLL] Are Maine Drivers Still Using Their Phones While Driving?
Two years ago, Mainers were preparing to drive hands free and two years later I don't know a single person who's been pulled over for driving with a phone in their hand.
Nationwide, hands-free driving has been enacted into State laws. 24 U.S. States along with D.C., Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have hands-free laws and in September of 2019 Maine joined that group of states in helping to avoid increasing distracted driving vehicle accidents and deaths.
In 2018, the NCSL reports that over 2800 people died in vehicle accidents caused by distracted driving with 400,000 injuries documented.
Now, two years since Maine's hands-free phone use ban it's hard to find the results of these changes online, that is, it's difficult to find how many vehicle accidents in Maine were due to distracted driving, or more specifically, to cell phone use since 2019. Information found doesn't get that specific and information that was found is hard to determine if the craziness of the pandemic is a factor in motor vehicle accidents in the past few years.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think driving without a phone in your hand is much safer than driving with one because obviously your attention isn't divided. But, from a first hand account of being a Maine driver on Maine roads, I'm still seeing plenty of people texting while driving, being distracted at a stop light and not going when it turns green because of their phone in their hand, and plenty of other examples of how this Maine law doesn't seem to be curbing what I've been witnessing on the road for some years now. And, I don't know anybody that's been pulled over because of their phone use while driving- and I know some people that do it... a lot!
So, we want to know if you have you seen a difference in people using their phones hand-free in the car since 2019 compared to now? Vote below and let us know if you've seen a bigger difference, the same kind of usage or less since Maine's hands-free law was put into law.