A North Vancouver driver who reached down to plug in his cellphone while stopped at a red light has had an appeal of his distracted driving ticket tossed by a B.C. Supreme Court justice.
Masoud Jahani appealed his $167 traffic ticket, arguing before Justice Miriam Maisonville that he shouldn’t have received the ticket for using an electronic device while driving, because he wasn’t actually using his cellphone at the time.
But the judge rejected that, pointing out that “use” of a cellphone includes any kind of handling of the phone. In some circumstances, even looking at a cellphone screen while driving can be considered using it, the judge noted in her written decision.
Jahani’s traffic ticket came about as a result of a cellphone enforcement blitz conducted by North Vancouver RCMP at the intersection of Marine Drive and Capilano Road on Oct. 28, 2015.
According to the judge’s decision, a police officer who was part of the enforcement operation saw Jahani looking down, about three car lengths from the intersection. As the police officer approached, he saw Jahani with the cellphone in his hand.
Jahani told the officer he was stopped at a red light and had only reached for his phone in order to plug it into a charger.
In B.C. Supreme Court, Jahani – who has legal training – sought to introduce cellphone records that would show whether he was making a call at the time. But the judge ruled that wouldn’t matter, because even holding the phone would be a violation of B.C.’s distracted driving laws.
“It is the handling of the device and the use, not whether the device was capable of transmitting or receiving, that is the issue before the court,” the judge noted.
“Use” can even be defined as “a person who watches the screen of an electronic device” she noted.
Cellphones can be distracting, even when they aren’t being used for sending or receiving, the judge wrote.
“I find that Mr. Jahani’s use of the phone, even for the purposes of charging, was a distracting event.”
Jahani is certainly not alone.
Last year, there were 43,000 distracted driving tickets handed out provincewide, said Mark Milner, road safety program manager for ICBC.
Although that’s down from a peak of 55,000 tickets in 2014, it’s clear many people can’t resist sneaking a peak at that text while they’re behind the wheel.
Milner said according to ICBC’s own public surveys, while most people understand they shouldn’t be using their phones while driving, about 40 per cent still admit to doing it at least once out of every 10 trips.
To try to drive the message home, penalties for distracted driving have increased since the laws against cellphone use were first introduced in 2010. Now, even a first-time offender will get a ticket for $368 and four points on their licence which comes with an invoice for $175, for a total of $543. Subsequent tickets net higher costs.
Holding or looking at the phone will generally net you a ticket, Milner said.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re doing with the device, you’re considered to be using it.”
Drivers aren’t allowed to program Google Maps or GPS devices while driving, except with voice commands, he said.
Milner said distracted driving is the second leading cause of fatal accidents in B.C. and the No. 1 cause of accidents causing injury.
It is also the leading contributing cause of collisions involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, he said.
“The majority of those crashes occur at intersections. If you’re busy looking at your phone, you’re not going to notice that a pedestrian is stepping off the curb … .”
Milner said he’s heard from police who relate a variety of creative excuses people have used for using their phones, including everything from “I was just looking at the time” to dubious definitions of emergencies.
“Calling your wedding planner because you need to make a last-minute change is not an emergency,” said Milner.
“There’s really no excuse for doing this.”
On the day Jahani was nabbed by police, he was one of 40 North Shore commuters who got tickets for distracted driving.
Another sting, in which police officers posed as construction workers and flaggers, nabbed 50 distracted drivers last month.
