February is Distracted Driving Month on the Alberta Traffic Safety Calendar, and local RCMP detachments, as well as municipal enforcement, are taking the opportunity to do some educating.

Texting is the primary activity that comes to mind, but really any activity with a cellphone can be considered an offence.

Senior Okotoks Peace Officer Sam Burnett says even holding a cell phone can land you with a ticket.

"Driving around and holding your phone is an offence. The actual offence is worded as manipulate, view, or hold a handheld, wireless electronic device. I hear this all the time, 'I was just holding my phone.' Maybe that's true, maybe that's not, I don't know why you drive around and simply hold your phone, but that in itself is the offence. You're best to put it away somewhere where you're not gonna be distracted by it."

Surprisingly, Burnett says the 35-44-year-old age bracket is the largest group when it comes to distracted driving offences.

He says it makes sense when you think about it, as younger drivers are warned against distracted driving from the very beginning, whereas older drivers were around in a time when using a cellphone while driving was perfectly legal.

"It's the same thing back in the day with impaired driving, right? Impaired driving used to not be an offence, then it was a ticketable offence, and then it became a criminal offence. If you look at the most prolific offenders in that group, historically, it was the people who impaired driving wasn't an offence. They developed that pattern of behaviour. It's similar with texting right? Texting was fine, talking on your phone was fine and allowed. We used to have car phones!"

Though phones are the main culprit in these offences, Burnett says you'd be surprised at the multitude of other activities drivers get up to.

"Grooming, reading materials, eating can be considered distracted driving if you don't have hands on the wheel. I've literally seen someone driving while eating a bowl of soup. So one hand on the bowl, one hand on the spoon, I'm guessing their knee was on the steering wheel. People do odd things, that's for sure."

While pets often enjoy car rides, he says you'll want to keep them well away from the driver's seat.

"It's anything that interferes with your ability to operate your motor vehicle, and that's actually specifically mentioned there. Please do not drive with your pets on your lap. They get in the way of the steering wheel, and if you really care about your pet, in the event of a collision, if that airbag goes off and hits your pet, it's not going to go well for you or them."

Distracted Driving Month always sees increased operations from local officers, with this year being no exception.

Burnett says they'll be out once again, as they were last year.

"We wrote 92 distracted driving tickets over the course of about three weeks and about five different operations that spanned about five hours. So that was an awful lot of tickets, I wasn't overly impressed by that. We will be out there again this month, weather permitting, but it looks like we're warming up here and we will be out."

 

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