Posted on 06/21/2009 1:51:52 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
Legislation would impose a $100 fine for touching a GPS navigation screen while driving in New Jersey.
A New Jersey state lawmaker wants to make it a crime for drivers to touch the screen of a satellite navigation device in a moving vehicle. Earlier this month, state Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith (D-Hudson) introduced legislation to expand the state's existing prohibition on using a cell phone behind the wheel.
"This bill would amend current law to also prohibit the manual operation of a global positioning system (GPS) device or similar navigation device by the operator of a moving motor vehicle," the official summary for A4064 explains. "The bill would allow the operator to use a voice-activated GPS device."
Motorists pulled over for the newly created offense would face a $100 fine without license points. A more broadly worded proposal to ban GPS operation while drivinghas been adopted in Spain's legislative body with penalties of 100 euros (US $140) with points.
While no vote has been taken on Smith's idea, such bill introductions can sometimes reflect a national trend. In 2005, a bill introduced in the New Jersey legislature to ban smoking in cars carrying childrenwent nowhere. Now the idea is law in Arkansas, California, Louisiana and Maine with three dozen states considering adopting similar bans.
A copy of the legislation is available in a 25k PDF file at the source link below.
Source: Assembly, Number 4064
next you won’t be allowed to pass your kid a sippy cup while driving..........
Why doesn’t this home for political criminals just tax people for breathing, urinating, walking, talking....and get it over with.
The State is going broke and all these nitwits can do is pass more nanny state laws.
New Jersey
state motto: “where’s mine?”
Here in NJ they passed a law that you can’t have your lights out if you’re wipers are on.
Lol....they’re all so sucking up to Charlie...roflmbo...
Pretty soon you won’t be allowed to engage in any ‘verbal contact’ with anyone inside or outside the vehicle, while you’re driving.
The obvious civil resistance on that one is not to drive with your lights on. After all, that is required in large European cities. Problem solved.
How about just pass a law against driving?
So now they want to ban GPS, which helps drivers negotiate the wild twists and turns of Joiysey? Typical.
Seems they just like the status quo (as well as reputation) and want everyone to continue to get lost while driving there ..
/OK .. rant off :)
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
We’d all be a lot safer if we’d all just stay home with the doors locked. How about passing a law.
Why now a ban on moron holding an elected office?
Lights on when wipers on is a common sense measure , I support it... it’s more to make sure you are visible to others than anything.
Why now a ban on morons holding an elected office?
Someone in the GPS business is behind this.
Not surprising at all for New Jersey - even more shocking to me are the property tax rates there. Friends of ours pay more than $1000 per month! We pay less than two grand per year in our neighborhood.
Good to know they don't have any real problems to work on!
NJ must be a paradise!
I’m not sure a law would do much good. The governor of the state himself can’t be bothered with buckling his seat belt.
Tennessee has had the same law for years. Of course it’s an inclement weather rule but it is open for interpretation.
Fair enough, nobody wants to find an address in New Jersey anyway.
How so? How would banning GPS benefit those in the business?
My GPS can't keep up with NJ's convoluted highway system.
vs.
How many deaths have occurred from drunk illegal alien drivers?
We all know the answer...so why isn't the NJ legislature cracking down on illegal aliens?
voice activated GPS requirement would force all those old ones to be obsolete thereby creating a new market for the updated ones voice activated ones.
If you have an electorate who believes that the purpose of government is to pick them up and burp them and give them a banky and a bot-bot, and wipe their ass and tuck them into bed and read them a story....it is completely unsurprising that they would end up with legislators like this.
I am in favor of that law, nothing I hate more than an idiot driving in the pouring rain without their lights on. Your cars lights aren’t just for you to see the road.
Ahhh K ... yer looking at it from the point of a 'chess position' .. got it. Thanks
They’re already giving tickets for a GPS being in the windshield and obscuring vision.
“My car has a built-in GPS. It won’t work if you’re in motion. I yell (to no one in particular) “Friggin’ Nanny state car” every time it shuts down on me.”
What do you mean by “won’t work”? Does that mean dead keys, or dead everything? ...and what kind of car?
Nanny state laws are good if YOU agree with them?
I guess you support the Brady Bunch wanting to ban firearms because THEY agree with banning them?
Why don’t YOU make a list of everything that YOU think is dangerous and have the state ban all of them even if the laws aren’t needed and are really stupid?
Fifteen miles per hour is safer than thirty so why don’t we pass a law that cars can’t go faster than fifteen?
Walking is almost idiot proof so why don’t we pass a law against any mode of transportation other than walking?
None of that damn fast walking either!
WE NEED more laws!
Let’s say I’m at a stoplight and I’m trying to program in an address I want to find. It allows me to enter information as long as I’m not moving. Once my wheels start to roll, the screen goes blank and I can’t enter any more letters to spell out whatever it is I’m entering at the time. It’s a Nissan Murano.
Same thing happens to me. It is almost impossible to "turn around" in NJ. New Jersey (along with oregon) also doesn't allow you to even pump your own gas which is bizarre.
Sure, using safety equipment is a common sense idea - that’s why enterprising folks invented them in the first place. Requiring their employment through regulation in order to generate revenue is a poor idea and that is something that I for one do not support.
Same with prohibiting the GPS units. There’s no good reason to do that and plenty of reason why not.
At what point did we lose the ability to think for ourselves?
How the heck did you get lost in north jersey? Sussex county has 1 highway. Rt 206. If you get the chance go down old mine road. One of the oldest roads in the U.S.
I’m moving to New Hampshire. The Free Staters there just defeated an adult seatbelt law, so nothing silly like this would ever fly there.
@$(*#@&*$ nanny state!
They're working on that for all of us. You stay home with the door locked and they provide you with food, healthcare, and employment.
There's only one problem.
They keep the key.
"NO LEFT TURN" and "ONE WAY - DEAD END" ... (OK, I exaggerate on the 2nd one ;)
Thanks - they’re obviously worried about liability.
NJ has always sucked. They just give you more reasons to hate them.
Yeah, I suppose...but a passenger couldn’t even do it if they wanted to.
NH hasn’t required seat belt use from the git-go...Free Staters have nothing to do with it...someone brings it up every year; and it always gets shot down.
Not banning GPS’es...replacing all with voice-activated ones.
My dad used to swing his arm around to try to smack misbehaving kids while he was driving, swerving as he did it. I bet these days he’d be arrested on several different charges. Child endangerment, reckless driving, child abuse, driving while furious...oh, and on top of that he’d get six citations for no seatbelts. Well they were there, they were just stuffed down into the cushions, and if we were in the front (under 12 - gasp), the seatbelt was mom’s arm across the front of us.
Without the nanny state, it’s a miracle we survived childhood!
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