San Ramon Police Cracking Down on Distracted Cell Phone Drivers in April

If you hold your phone or send out text messages while driving, the San Ramon Police Department won't be going lightly on you in April.

This month is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has identified texting and cellular telephone use as the fastest growing and most visible distraction as an associated factor in collisions.

San Ramon police say they will be focusing on drivers using hand-held cellular telephones, texting and other distractions this month.

"Officers will be out in force with zero tolerance enforcement of distracted drivers," San Ramon police said in a press release.

Since California enacted a ban on hand-held cell phone use in 2008, deaths due to cell phone use has dropped.

In an analysis released this week by the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that, when looking at state crash records two years before and two years after the hand-held ban went into effect, overall traffic deaths declined 22 percent while hand-held cell phone driver deaths went down 47 percent. Similar results were shown for hands-free cell phone use as well as injuries in both categories. 

“These results suggest that the law banning hand-held cell phone use while driving had a positive impact on reducing traffic fatalities and injuries,” said Dr. David Ragland, Director of SafeTREC.