Idaho’s Distracted Driving Laws
Idaho police are seeing more and more car accidents due to distracted driving.
What does it mean? What are the rules?
Call it distracted driving. Call it inattentive driving. The law calls it a misdemeanor. You can be fined up to $1,000 if police catch you driving distracted. Think you can afford the fine? The punishment can be much more severe for some.
AAA reports that over 200 people were killed on Idaho roads in 2015. That's a 16% increase from the prior year, which is double the national average increase. If you do the math, there are right around 100 deaths per day on America's road ways.
Texting and driving may not seem like a big deal. Everyone does it, right? Not quite. As the numbers tell us, it could result in a major accident. And yes, to clarify, it is illegal. So says the Idaho DMV:
The state of Idaho has a ban on texting for all drivers. This is a primary law, which gives police officers the authorization to pull you over and give you a ticket for violating the law, even if you hadn't done some other traffic violation prior to that. However, this offense is not considered to be a moving violation, which means that no points are added to your license.
The text messaging ban has been in place since July of 2012. Idaho was the 37th state in the country to adopt the rule.
Novice drivers have even more safety measures to abide by:
Novice drivers in Idaho are prohibited from using both hand-held and hands-free cell phones. This means that they are not allowed to use their cell phones to talk, send or compose text messages while driving, be it on a hand-held phone, or a hands-free device of some sort.