Tomorrow, October 1st, the “Florida Ban on Texting While Driving Law" goes into effect. Governor Rick Scott signed the final bill back in March, making Florida the 41st state to ban texting while driving.
As the name suggests, the brunt of the law is meant to deter drivers from sending or reading text messages. But it bans pretty much anything that requires quote manually typing or entering multiple letters, numbers, symbols, or other characters. So no emailing, searching the internet, or dialing a number.
The law still allows use of phones for reporting crimes to police, getting weather alerts, and listening to radio broadcasts. Also, according to the law, using a voice-operated command system like Siri is perfectly fine.Now, getting a citation for breaking this law, though, might be difficult. For one, it's what's called a secondary offense. This means that you have to be pulled over for something else in order to get a citation. Run a red light while texting you'll get a citation. Speeding and texting: citation. Texting alone: No citation.
What’s interesting is that a police officer can only look at your phone records if you're in an accident that kills or injures someone. Otherwise they need to actually see it happen.
