Public Safety

CHP Targets Cell Phone Use While Driving

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published February 15, 2010 at 3:00 AM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

The California Highway Patrol does not yet have figures to show whether banning cell phone use while driving has reduced accidents.

But Gary Dominguez, head of the CHP in San Diego, says since the law went into effect, officers have ticketed thousands of drivers statewide for talking on their cells or texting while driving.

"One of the banes of our existence in enforcing driving traffic right now is that cell phone," Dominguez said. " We wrote about 135,000 cell phone tickets last year and we are going to increase our enforcement effort in citing people for illegally using the phone for texting."

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The CHP says 29,000 accidents statewide in 2008 were caused by inattention - and a thousand of those drivers admitted they were on their cell phones.

The agency says national statistics show 28% of accidents were caused by inattention due to cell phone use.

Public Safety

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.