When you are driving, it only takes one second of taking your eyes off the road and glancing at your phone for a tragedy to happen, law enforcement officials said on the heels of a distracted driving campaign in Minnesota.
“Everybody thinks it will just take a second to look at their phone and it’s no big deal and they’ve done it a hundred times and nothing bad has happened — but we have seen crashes that happen in an instant and not only alters the drivers life but the lives of everyone around them,” said St. Paul Police Cmdr. Jeremy Ellison.
After law enforcement agencies across the state joined together in April to target distracted drivers, more than 6,000 citations were given, according to the state Department of Public Safety’s Office of Traffic Safety.
The St. Paul Police Department gave out 1,326 of those, far more than the agency with the next highest number, the Minnesota State Patrol’s west metro district, which gave out 329.
“We are not out to write tickets, we’re out to save lives. But if drivers won’t take safety seriously, enforcement becomes necessary.” said Mike Hanson, director of the Office of Traffic Safety. “Every time you take your eyes off the road, you’re gambling with your life and the lives of others around you. No text, no call is worth a tragedy.”
In St. Paul, the police department worked to let the public know they were targeting distracted driving by posting videos on their Facebook page to alert the community about their efforts and by discussing the campaign at regularly scheduled community meetings, Ellison said.
During the campaign, St. Paul police placed spotters on the sides of roads looking for drivers using cell phones. When they spotted a distracted driver, they notified officers in squad cars, who pulled the drivers over.
The department also used a special vehicle from the state, a pickup that has cameras on the sides to capture video evidence of drivers using their cell phones, Ellison said.
During the campaign, one driver was stopped twice in 10 minutes for a hands-free cell phone violation.
The 32-year-old man was stopped on April 22 at Seventh Street and Bates Avenue and then seven minutes later cited again at Seventh Street and Payne Avenue, about a mile down the road, Ellison said.
In another instance, while traffic was stopped from congestion, the driver in a vehicle next to a St. Paul law enforcement officer was using her phone. The officer turned on his squad car lights and approached the driver who was still intently looking at her phone. She was startled to see the officer near her and was cited for the hands-free cell phone law.
In March, a 17-year-old was driving down Shepard Road in St. Paul when her phone dinged and she looked down. “In that instant, a pedestrian stepped into the roadway,” Ellison said. “Thankfully it was not a fatality but it had a big impact on her and the pedestrian. She felt terrible that it happened. That’s an example of everything seems to be fine and in an instant you look down and things change and tragedy strikes.”
In 2024, at least 29 fatalities and 137 serious injuries were attributed to distracted driving, state officials said. One in 11 crashes last year were due to distracted driving.
“It’s 100 percent preventable,” Ellison said. “Those text messages and changing the music or using GPS driving in hand, those are all things that can wait or should be done ahead of time before driving. We really need people to put their phones down.”
Minnesota hands-free cell phone law
“Hands-free” means you can’t hold you phone in your hand while driving.
The law allows a driver to use a cell phone to make calls, text, listen to music or podcasts and get directions, but only by voice commands or single-touch activation without holding the phone.
Accessing social media, streaming videos or Googling information on a device while driving are against the law in Minnesota, even in hands-free mode.
Visit HandsFreeMN.org for more information about the law.
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