California Appeals Court Rules State Law Doesn't Prohibit Driver Use of Smartphone Maps
A California appeals court has ruled that a driver cannot be convicted of distracted driving for using a smartphone mapping application under current state law that prohibits the use of talking and texting while driving.
Because the law is so narrowly tailored -- it prohibits "listening" and talking on a phone without a hands-free device, as well as sending and receiving text-based messages -- it does not specifically apply to using smartphones in other ways.
The 5th District Court of Appeal reversed the case of a Fresno man who was ticketed in January 2012 for looking at a map on his iPhone 4 while stuck in traffic. The driver, Steven Spriggs, challenged the $165 fine and won.
Spriggs was caught up by road work and grabbed his cellphone to find an alternate route when a California Highway Patrol officer on a motorcycle spotted him and stopped him to write the ticket.
It is possible that the California state legislature will address the issue in a future session as the law was likely intended to ban drivers from playing Angry Birds or making changes in a smartphone mapping app while driving, though a strict reading of the law doesn't explicitly make those activities illegal.
The decision reversed the ruling of a lower appeals court from last year.
Laws in other states may or may not cover the use of smartphone mapping apps, and this ruling will have no impact in states other than California. In addition, California drivers can still be cited for distracted driving, but could point to this case when fighting their ticket in court.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
And it's not because distracted driving is OK. The problem is that most of these laws concentrate on SPECIFIC distractions: Texting and e-mailing are NOT OK, but scrolling through your list of contacts to find a number to dial or using a map IS OK? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
Here's a simple suggestion: Write a law that says ANY distraction is punishable, IF it causes you to cause or be involved in an accident. I don't care if the distraction is your cellphone, your desire to apply makeup while you are driving, your trying to fish a CD case off the floor on the passenger side, or you turning around because your kids in the backseat are misbehaving -- if you take your hands off the wheel or take your eyes off the road, YOU ARE A DISTRACTED DRIVER.
So, eyes front and DRIVE.
----------
"No, officer, I wasn't distracted when I caused that accident; I was looking at porn on my iPhone. Pretty sure the law doesn't cover that."
idiotic police giving tickets L and R to substantiate their own meaningless existence!
MOST cops don't think, he should have moved on, obviously the drives was not endangering the traffic in anyway doing what he did.
Having said that, there should be a clear distinction between such cases whether you are driving, or stationary due to traffic lights or construction, etc.
What issue?
The problem is, how do define "distracted driving?" Most new cars now have built-in GPS. If you glance at the built-in screen, like intended, is that distracted? If you use a phone gps, how is that any different than looking at the built-in screen? How is any of this different than when we had paper maps or printed turn by turn directions? How is manipulating a gps any different than manipulating a radio or other controls on a car?
The real problem is caused by people texting or talking on the phone, one-handed and not paying attention. But drivers get just as distracted by talking with other people in the car. A mother with her kids can be equally distracted while driving as someone who is texting while driving.
Where are all the lines drawn?