The new North Carolina law banning text messaging and driving went into effect in December of last year, but police are struggling to enforce the new law and many drivers are struggling to put down their cell phone and concentrate on the road.
While the vast majority of North Carolina drivers agree that texting is dangerous, NC Highway Patrol officers say that it is difficult to catch drivers in the act and issue the $100 tickets as outlined in the new law. Currently, the best way to catch drivers who are distracted by their mobile devices is to pull up their phone records in the wake of a serious traffic accident to see if they were on their phones at the time of the crash.
At the same time, officials say that teens are not heeding the new texting law as well as they should. Teens, they say, often think that they are invincible, and text messaging and smart phone use is a bigger part of their life than many adults.