Duane Hicks
If you’re going to get behind the wheel, put down your smartphone.
The province passed the Making Ontario’s Roads Safer Act this week, increasing fines for distracted driving from the current range of $60-$500 to $300-$1,000.
Distracted drivers who are convicted also will get three demerit points upon conviction.
There also will be escalating sanctions on convictions for novice drivers, the province said.
Linda Plumridge, chair of Safe Communities Rainy River District, welcomed the tougher rules.
“None of us like to pay more fines,” she noted. “However, sometimes, unless there are fines, people don’t pay attention to the laws.
“Until fines were levied with seatbelts, people kept ignoring the seatbelt laws.”
Plumridge said Safe Communities’ parent organization, Parachute, has statistical proof that once the public starts obeying safety-related laws, deaths and injuries—as well as the cost of injuries to Canadians in general—goes down.
According to a recent report from Parachute, the number of injuries related to impaired driving has gone “way down,” and people have been wearing their seatbelts.
But the number of injuries and deaths resulting from
distracted driving-caused incidents is on the rise.
“By levelling the fines, it makes people pay attention,” Plumridge reasoned.
“I can tell you on my way to work today, I saw two people on the phone,” she added.
“That’s not texting—that’s on the phone. And we know that it’s against the law.
“It’s a shame we have to be fined in order for us to do things to save our own lives or make our roads safer,” said Plumridge.
“I personally don’t want to be hit by someone who’s distracted driving.”
She noted Safe Communities hopes to do a distracted driving awareness campaign locally in future.
The new act also will:
•apply current alcohol-impaired sanctions to drivers who are drug-impaired;
•introduce additional measures to address repeat offenders of alcohol-impaired driving;
•require drivers to wait until pedestrians have completely crossed the road before proceeding at school crossings and pedestrian crossovers;
•increase fines and demerits for drivers who ‘door’ cyclists, and require all drivers to maintain a minimum distance of one-metre when passing cyclists where possible;
•help municipalities collect unpaid fines by expanding licence plate denial for drivers who do not pay certain Provincial Offences Act fines; and
•allow a broader range of qualified medical professionals to identify and report medically-unfit drivers, and clarify the types of medical conditions to be reported.
The province said the new fines and measures will come into force over the coming months.
“Ontario’s roads are among the safest in North America and this new legislation is intended to keep it that way,” Transportation minister Steven Del Duca said in a press release.
“I look forward to continued collaboration with our law enforcement and other dedicated road safety partners to implement these measures,” he added.
If current collision trends continue, fatalities from distracted driving may exceed those from drinking-and-driving by 2016.
