{"id":38828,"date":"2019-01-30T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/drivers-who-text-in-school-zones-may-face-steep-fines\/"},"modified":"2019-01-30T01:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T09:30:00","slug":"drivers-who-text-in-school-zones-may-face-steep-fines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/drivers-who-text-in-school-zones-may-face-steep-fines\/","title":{"rendered":"Drivers who text in school zones may face steep fines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Sean <\/strong><strong>Harding,<\/strong> <em>WNPA Olympia News Bureau<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em>A proposed bill would double the fine for motorists caught using a cellphone in a school, playground or crosswalk speed zone to up to $234 per infraction, or up to $468 for repeat offenders.<\/p>\n<p>Washington&rsquo;s first law to address texting-while-driving &mdash; it also prohibited applying makeup and eating while driving &mdash; went into effect two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;One of the primary crosswalks I sit at is Mill Creek Elementary,&rdquo; said Christine White, a patrol officer with the Mill Creek Police Department.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I have seen people on their cell phones talking, texting, reading, doing other things besides actually paying attention to what is in front of them,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had to smack the side of cars, and fortunately I have a very hard ring and it gets their attention.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,477 individuals were killed and 391,000 were injured in distracted driving-affected accidents in 2015, although it&rsquo;s not clear how many of those happened in school zones.<\/p>\n<p>The bill would require one half of the fines collected to be deposited in school-zone-safety accounts.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;If we can&rsquo;t keep our children safe in our communities and their schools, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anything else we&rsquo;re going to do in this world that&rsquo;s going to matter,&rdquo; said the bill&rsquo;s sponsor, Rep. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek. &ldquo;This is just an opportunity to keep our children safe.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>If passed, the fines go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill would double fine for motorists caught using a cellphone or device in school zone <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":38829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-38828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38828"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=38828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}