Posted on 01/19/2015 7:19:26 AM PST by BobNative
COBB COUNTY, Ga. — An Alabama man says he was cited by Cobb County police for “eating while driving” under the distracted driving law.
Madison Turner said he ordered a double quarter pounder with cheese from McDonald’s last week, and a police officer pulled him over, along Canton Road in Marietta.
“The officer explained to me that he observed me eating a burger for 2 miles,” Madison said. “He said specifically three times, you can’t just go down the road eating a hamburger.”
According to the ticket, the officer wrote him up under Georgia’s distracted driving law, and under the comments sections wrote “eating while driving.”
That law reads, in part: “A driver shall exercise due care in operating a motor vehicle on the highways of this state and shall not engage in any actions which shall distract such driver from the safe operation of such vehicle.”
“Maybe I was enjoying the burger too much I needed to tone it down. I was certainly willing to do so but I didn’t expect to be fined or punished,” Madison said.
“If this was the law, I’d have to hire more attorneys because everybody does it including me,” said William Head, a longtime traffic and DUI attorney, who is not representing Turner.
“I’ve only seen something like this charge when there’s an accident. There was no accident here so the fact that this man was charged with eating and driving is a first for me,” Head said. Head added that law was very vague.
“Maybe if you had a giant pizza in both hands and you weren’t holding the wheel or maybe if you had a watermelon, half watermelon and you were just diving into it holding it with both hands, maybe that would be something,” Head said.
A spokesperson for Cobb County police said they could not comment, since the case is ongoing. Madison has a court date on Feb. 3.
” and can drink your beer at the same time”
Oh..ya...no ticket for that...
Big woman, burger partially wrapped, putting it up to her maw and the paper would block her view and she would take her hand (singular) off the steering wheel to move the paper so she could see where she was going. Saw her slam on her brakes because the light turned red well ahead of us --she didn;t notice because she had he face buried in the burger and paper and when she looked up, the cars in front of her had stopped and she slammed on the brakes and when I came alongside her at the light I could see the burger and wrapper were smeared all over her steering wheel, dashboard and between her fingers as she clutched the wheel. No telling what happened to the drink I am sure she had in her lap or cup holder.
A girl about 16-18 hit me in the back once...When she got out, she had lipstick smeared all over one side of her face....
Odd. I follow the city budget where I live and never see officer pay based upon the number of tickets they issue nor it the police budget contingent upon ticket revenue. I see a police operating budget but revenue from tickets are reported in the court portion of the budget.
Can you please provide a link where a city has a budget line item that says how much the officers get paid is based on ticket revenue.
;-)
How about speeding through traffic, going through signals while talking on a radio and looking at a data screen?
Like cops do every day.
Not to mention "Farding in Their Car" Sorry Rush.
That said, these same LEOs are immune from the same Laws foisted upon the masses.
As one poster had already noted, they have a laptop, radio, sometimes even the K-9 unit. Let alone, IIRC (maybe just here in Jax, FL?), they are exempt from the ‘talking on phone while driving w/out hands-free’ Laws.
Hell, I was pulled over, not that long ago for ‘speeding’ on my way to work (she came up fast, then stared pacing alongside). Cop asked me how she know I was speeding...”I was speeding”. Guess in any school, fishing may net a few.
I can’t even count the times when they would light/siren through a light to turn it off on the other side; let alone driving the posted limit and watching the po-po car out-pace everyone else (again, no lights, no sirens).
Yep, cop dash-cams w/ instrument read-out and body cameras...I’m all for it. But I expect the back-lash when it starts getting used again the blue wall.
First provide where I said such.
I said they make an Income. And that income goes towards the city budget. The city budget is denoted in US dollars which by their very nature are fungible. The more money that goes in the budget from ticket income the more can be spent. Its a very simple concept.
Example: 2 police officers on the day shift have written 60,000 bucks worth of tickets for fiscal year 2014 which goes into this fund A. If we put one more police officer on the day shift we should be able to write an additional 30,000 dollars worth of tickets. We can then afford to hire an additional police officer. Which comes out of fund B because now we can move less tax dollars into fund A since we will get a projected increase of 30K and we can move those tax dollars to fund B to pay for the hiring of a new officer.
Oh and you should note I sat on my Town's Mayor's Budget Advisory council for 4 years and the example provided above was exactly a strategy my town used.
Any questions?
We got rid of our local police department due to the fact that we couldn’t justify paying them to sit on the main road and write tickets. Crime is nearly non existent here.
The police chief was happy with the move. Said he didn’t become a cop to write tickets.
The burger in my hand can find its way to my mouth without me taking my eyes off the road. Unless this driver was driving badly, it sounds like someone was fishing for a reason to write a ticket.
A friend of mine got rear-ended one time, at a red light, by someone eating a salad while driving. Plate, fork, steering wheel...
I have a 2006 car with no Bluetooth in it. I have a Bluetooth thing that hooks onto my visor that cost $20. Works like a charm.
CGASMIA68 FTTW!!!
Police ticket quotas as a revenue source
The town that lived off of speeding tickets
C'mon.
Wonder if they are going to ticket people who are driving with dogs in their lap?
I wonder if you could arrest a cop for “Driving While Policing”.
There’s no end to what you see people stuck on the 405 through Los Angeles doing. I’ve seen it all.
Factually, you’re incorrect. Eating drivers are far more dangerous.
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