Officer: Results Of Texting While Driving Detail 'Very Alarming'
Drivers Who Were Texting Never Saw Cops
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Illinois State Police recently set out to determine whether texting while driving is as big a problem as they thought, and one officer said he was pretty surprised by what they found.
WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports State Police Lt. David Byrd said he knew texting and driving was a problem, but the results of a recent texting detail were alarming.
"The only people who actually saw the state police were people who were paying attention and driving, and looked up and saw us," he said. "We knew how distracted people are when they text and drive, now we had a first-hand look at it. … No driver who was texting and driving saw us until they got pulled over."
Byrd said officers look for "text head," when a driver is looking down and up and down again; and brake lights when there's no reason for the driver to slow down.
Officers wrote about 100 tickets in less than two hours in a recent effort to target drivers who were texting behind the wheel.
"It showed how much of a problem, that we already knew it was, but when we saw it, it was very alarming," Byrd said. "At the end of the day, we're just trying to save lives."
