PixabayThinking of going to Honolulu in the future? A fan of texting? A fan of texting as you cross the road? Then you might wanna go back to the drawing board, because that kind of activity is now illegal in the US city.
The law was passed in July in an attempt to deter injuries and deaths that happen while people are not concentrating on their immediate surroundings and finally came into force on Wednesday.
The price for first offenders will come in at $15-$35 (roughly £11-£26), while repeat offenders could be face fines of up to $99, according to the BBC.
The problem has been on the rise across the past decade:
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Unless you’re making an emergency call, anyone caught zipping through a smartphone crossing roads will be prosecuted.
The National Safety Council in the US put ‘distracted walking’ on their list on injury risks in 2015.
PixabayThe Distracted Law states:
‘Mobile electronic device’ means any handheld or other portable electronic equipment capable of providing wireless and/or data communication between two or more persons or of providing amusement, including but not limited to a cellular phone, text messaging device, paging device, personal digital assistant, laptop computer, video game, or digital photographic device, but does not include equipment.
Yep, the sad reality is that now we’ll have to bother looking out for ourselves in Honolulu.
PixabayWelcome to 2017, an age where people have to be threatened with legal measures to separate from their phones even for a few seconds…
