Avid texters beware: Fort Lee, N.J. police said they will begin issuing $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who are caught texting while walking.
“It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware,” said Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department.
Ripoli said the borough, which is home to approximately 35,000 residents, has suffered three fatal pedestrian-involved accidents this year. He hopes his crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking will make his town safer, but not everyone is on board with the idea of issuing $85 tickets.
“When I walk I still look around. I’m not like constantly looking down the whole time,” said resident Sue Choe.
Another woman complained about the tickets were “a lot of money.”
Officers handed out pamphlets during a short grace period in March before they began aggressively going after “dangerous walkers.”
More than 117 tickets have been issued, according to the New Jersey Record.
Two professors at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a study on walking and texting. They found texters are 60 percent more likely to veer off line than non-texters.
“We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting,” Eric Lamberg, co-author of the study, toldLong Island Business News. “Texting disrupts your ability much more than does talking.”
I don’t even know how you are going to enforce it…So walking while reading or playing video games is perfectly fine, but looking at your phone is not…
I don’t know much about Fort Lee, is it a place where there is no actual crime happens and the police literally have nothing else better to do??? :rofl
Fort Lee has a small army of meter maids, Im sure they are the ones doing the enforcing. I got reemed out by a meter maid that told me unless I gave her a quarter she was writing me a ticket for literally being 1 minute past my meter running out.
I can’t believe how stupid some people are. I can text and walk just fine. My peripheral vision is great and I know to take quick glances up to make sure I’m going in my intended direction. AND I HAVE ONE FUCKING EYE! If people had some more common sense, this texting while doing just about anything issue wouldn’t be an issue.
this is fake. I was reading on msnbc the other day that this was all just some joke. Cant find the article now but they interviewed the chief of police from that town and all
Not fake, just misleading and inaccurate. The police chief wants more tickets for Jaywalking issued and that got construed into “texting is banned”. Luckily none of the news agencies that ran the article spoke with the chief first :lol
On company property???..IMO that’s smart as I’m sure some dumb fuck would trip and break their neck while texting and inevitably try to sue the company over it.
I have a funny feeling this has something to do with it here in the OP as well…
