Police are going to new heights to catch distracted drivers

Sometimes it’s necessary to go to great heights to get the message across.

Distracted driving, which commonly refers to using your mobile device while driving, has been a topic of interest for law enforcement over the last few years because it’s now the number one factor in road deaths, ahead of even drinking and driving.

Most provinces, including Ontario, Alberta and Quebec, increased fines and demerit point hits for those caught driving with a mobile device in-hand. Even with random police checks, the severity of the act of using your device to talk or text while driving is reportedly still not sinking in with the general population.

And now, new tactics are being explored. West Vancouver Police and North Vancouver RCMP recently teamed up to help stop distracted drivers and went undercover by using a cherry picker to spot drivers disobeying the law. In addition, the Ottawa police, Gatineau Police, OPP, and RCMP recently went on a 1-day crackdown in the Ottawa area by patrolling the streets in an undercover Ford F-250 pickup truck to catch distracted drivers in the act.

“The issue we run into is, drivers are now try to hide the cell phone and they keep it down low, out of sight,” said Const. TJ Jellinek of the Ottawa police. “With this vehicle we’re using today we’re sitting up very high, and when we pull up to a car we can look right down in and get a really good view of what the driver is doing.”

Distracted driving includes the use of hand-held devices such as smartphones, tablets, iPods, GPS and MP3 players, cellphone, laptops, and DVD players.

[source] CBC [/source]