When I am not blogging about safer teen driving, I am a lawyer. Lawyers are often criticized for many excesses, but one thing that has made me proud to practice is the way in which, at times, legal theories and advocacy have made the world a safer place.
So I nearly fell off my chair, and I am sure others did too, when I read recently a news article about a New Jersey appellate court decision involving liability for texting and driving. An 18 year old driver, who was texting, crossed the center line and crashed his pickup truck into a husband and wife on a motorcycle. Both of them lost both legs. They settled with the driver, but they also sued the person, a female acquaintance, who had sent the text message that the pickup driver was reading when he crashed.
Three judges agreed that in this particular case, there was not enough evidence to conclude that the woman who sent the text knew that her message might cause the driver to crash, but the judges said that if the circumstances showed that a texter knew that his or her message-recipient was driving, and reading the message could cause a crash, there might be grounds for holding the text sender liable.
My mind wanders. Can we imagine a message to parents saying that if you allow your teen to text anyone who is driving, you and your teen could be held liable for damages if a crash occurs? That would seem to be a very powerful deterrent to texting. Perhaps if we could adapt current technology so that someone sending a text would always be alerted that the recipient was driving (sort of like as “away message”) but sent the text anyway, there would be grounds for liability?
Stay tuned. This court case may be the start of a sea change.
The most frightened thing I ever saw as a driver, was on I-84 westbound by the old Aetna bulding in West Hartford. The driver behind me and in my lane was just a little bit too cloase. When I looked in my rear view mirror to check it out, the driver, a women, had both her hands off of the steering wheel as she signed in to her passenger!
As the responsibility for when a person looks at text message lies with the textee, and the idea that the sender might reasonably know that the recipient is driving could apply to ALL situations, holding the sender liable is ridiculous. If the case winds it’s way up to the US Supreme Court, I’m sure they’ll decide that way. (I’m a retired attorney.)
The second most frightening experience I had as a driver, was on the Route 2 exit from I-84 east bound. A well dressed women driver, probably in her 30s or 40s, was texing and following my too closely.