button who is the director of and forsman and safety at the department of motor vehicles and that topic is driving while distracted we welcome to a conversation about our new law which  happy to have you here so on october first to be hit the hands free cell phone ban went into effect and so i thought we would spend our time just talking about first driving while distracted and what that means and then some of the details about the new law and what you're finding as it's been implemented over the past three weeks absolutely you know if i may all log i'll provide some history on how we got here me in two thousand and nine  device while driving and that also included they couldn't use a hands free form so that is a junior operator you can't use a handheld phone or a hands free phone in this all comes under the graduated driver licens year adopted a law that follows the federal regulations for somebody who drives a commercial vehicle you know the large trucks and so forth and the driver of a commercial vehicle somebody that has a commercial driver's license was banned from using a handheld electronic device while driving and again that took effect last year in january of this year vermont had a law take effect that be and using a handheld electronic device while driving through a workshop on and  that leads us to where we are today on october first of this year a lot went out that applies to all drivers you can't use a portable handheld electronic device while driving and interestingly i think part of the reason we got to where we are today dialing telephone number so i think that was part of the reason why our legislators looked at it and said if we're going to have a ban like this it ought to be something that you could enforce so they applied it to all entailed electronic devices so the ban is exactly f device that you would hold in your am and use the the issue of distracted driving is is certainly an interesting one and in today's society we all like to multitask we like to be doing a lot of different things at one time and that's fine but our message is driving is serious business and when you're driving a motor vehicle you know your focus should be on driving safely so we're we're very encouraged with the law that took effect on october first and what we're hoping happens is that people really go and do an assessment of their driving practices and to minimize distractions and again to focus on that primary task and that's driving safely  a few people have asked me about you know adapting their car and finding it tricky about you know putting it out there where to put a hands free device in their car and the question has come up about putting it on the dash or put it out in the wind chill they're putting it on them in the cup holder are there there is a law that you're not allowed to put something on the windchill correct there's a couple of things a lot of cars that are mean you fractured today have the bluetooth device built right into the car you'll see that for example it will be built into the steering wheel where there's a button that you'll push and that would activate the phone  there are devices out there that are relatively inexpensive anywhere from forty dollars to one hundred hours that you can buy that will peer with your phone and those devices again a lot of my voice activated you don't have to touch it whatsoever you can give a voice command it will do it what the law says is that if you have a device you can't fix it to your windshield and quite frankly there's been a law in place for many years that talks about obstruc windshields and restriction from putting certain devices or stickers or so forth on the windshield anyway but the device has to be secure you know we you know our view as long as it's placed in a position where it's not sliding around  distracting the driver it's fine but but clearly you can to fix it to the windshield so can you have it in your lap you can is long as it secure again so much of this comes back to the driver and driver responsibility and being safe you don't want it to be sliding around you don't want to be a distraction to a lot of people they have it in case you know a purse on their belt that's going to be distracting and i do find that distracting so i've personally decided that i'm just not going to use the phone in the car because even that figuring out which button to push or seems to be distracting me we don't wonderful with the technology but there's a lot of potential for distraction and what we what we encourage people specifically around the use of a phone is as you're driving and you think you have to make a phone call is to ask yourself how critical is it that i make that phone call now if the phone rings you know how critical is it that i take the phone call now yeah i think we've grown to a society in which we think we have a mobile office or a mobile phone booth and we really don't so with with folks what we do encourage is that himself how is important how important is it i make or take a call or can i pull over to the side of the road and make for the call can the call wait until i get home i can't emphasize enough  the message we want people to hear is drive safely so i do want to end by invitation to you to call in and ask questions to glen button who is talking about distracted driving in the new hands free phone law he the phone number here is four three four to five five zero if you have a specific question for mr button one of the things when i was canvassing people about what to ask you was the idea of if you come to a stop and they are in like waiting and you're sitting waiting for some construction when you're not actually rolling is that ok what indicates is it has to be a moving motor vehicle on a public highway so if you were legally stopped even if it's for traffic then you can use the device does have to be a moving motor vehicle on a public highway having said that to drivers of a noncommercial vehicle if you're stopped for example at a red light or if there is a traffic delay or whatever you can do that lawfully it's far as penalties that's a question that we've been asked for a first offense the fine is up to two hundred hours the judicial bureau has said a waiver fined one hundred sixty two dollars if you have a second or subsequent offense within two years the fine can go up to five hundred hours in the waiver penalty for that is three hundred ninety two dollars there's no points assigned well the waiver penalty the judicial bureau traffic tickets are civil complaints they're not crimes they're not criminal offenses or civil complaints or you'll get a civil ticket and you have the option of going to traffic court and pull over to take a call or to make a call you when you said it's on the primary roads or you can't do that on the interstate you can in the back room yeah one of the questions we get is how about if i b radios two way radios are not covered by the law they are exempted from this as well as ham radio operators so if you have a true emergency you actually can pick up your phone and call correct but in any other case it's hands free correct ok so how about law enforcement personnel like to the police and the fire and rescue people have to abide by too there is no exemption for for a while enforcement or emergency rescue personnel and i don't think there should be you know you it is it is an unsafe practice it can be a distraction so for example with our staff and in the division i oversee i have about fifty fifty people and we just updated our policy to cover this and when we issued the policy we we told folks  conversation we just had was if you get a call you know how important is it i take the call right then can it wait and the most important thing they need to do is drive safely so the the intricate your question there is no exemption the policy applies to police fire and rescue personnel so again that phone number if you'd like to call end with a question for mr button is for three four to five five zero you know that the law has gone into effect on october first and what you what the first findings in terms of the first few weeks were you know what i think the findings are really encouraging when people would you have the law in place most people are going to follow the law and that's what we suspect suspected would happen with this and i've had conversations with a variety of different law enforcement officers we've had some violations but for the most part people are complying with the laws that we all use is very encouraging so we hope that trend continues yeah i  been surprised at the number of people that have addressed it with me and said you know thanks that that was a really good law not a pass because many of us have felt unsafe when we're driving along and see someone up on their phone and kind of wondering about them paying attention to that yeah down the road you know the whole issue of distracted driving i think that's one thing that our legislature has looked at and struggled with but you know the challenge is how do you define it yeah you know i think we can all tell stories of we saw somebody driving and they had the newspaper or they were you know combing their hair or doing whatever which is a distraction but really how do you define that a couple of states have an eye to distracted driving laws but there has to be an underlying offense that occurs first for example i'm talking on my cell phone and i go over the center line while going over the side of a line was the first harmful event and then you would take the person for distracted driving but it's because they already committed some other friend so it really is a problem it is you know it's an issue that we as a society have to evaluate and i think we have to get back to the basics  motor vehicle that is job number one operate that motor vehicle and not be involved in all these other distractions and i was i was surprised to learn that in fact that the national highway safety say that six  the national highway traffic safety administration reports at thirty three thousand five hundred sixty one people were killed in crashes on our highways and they estimate that ten percent of those were caused by some type of distraction now that may not necessarily be just talking on a cell phone but some type of distraction then and the studies that go in place when they're looking at these distractions really focus on three things and the first is the physical of having my hands on the steering wheel and not be fooling with the radio or the cellphone or whatever the other is the visual to be focusing on driving and not be looking off to the side or turning around talking my to my passengers in the rear and the third component is the cognitive and that's the focus part of not being you know not having my mind somewhere else to really focus on the importance of driving what kind of public education is being done around the state so that people do know about this and how can we help get the word out you have a website yeah you know i i'm pretty pleased and proud of the public education effort we put out under the statute the agency of transportation  which the department of motor vehicles is the division of was charged with the with that responsibility and we we have put a lot of information out on our web site the one highway safety alliance which is a private  public partnership has a wonderful wonderful website that has f a q's they have a guide to the different types of hands free devices that you can you can acquire we have put signs up we have signs at the entrances to the state from the various borders a very body traversed the interstate the last month you'll see that you'll have seen the verbal messaging signs that were that were out there we've done quite a few television shows radio shows newspaper interviews and so forth so i i would be very surprised to find find anyone that is not familiar with this law quite frankly back in august the governor's highway safety office did a survey on some different different traffic issues and one of the questions they asked was are you familiar that there's going to be a law on taking taking effect october first and seventy three percent of the respondents at that time back in august said yes they were they had a level of familiarity that there would be a law being the use of a handheld electronic device so we're we're pretty encouraged we think we think the word is out to the public right a couple of other questions about what about using the you can use the g p s but it still means to be if you can you can listen to the voice part it has to my secured and it the idea of pushing some buttons so i have a smartphone that i have to like push the button to dial or hit the one for the speed dial are you somehow touching the phone not at issue what what the law allows for is for a one touch activation or deactivation  called numbers frequently called numbers but you can use a hand to activate or deactivated voice and you already mentioned about the c b radio so that's not included c b radios are not included in the band two way radios and they referenced the federal regulation of deals with him operators here and radio operators as well or excluded  so just to recap there is a difference between all of us with regular drivers license and the junior operators license they still are not allowed junior operators and  this is all part of what's called the graduated driver licensing system for example if you're under eighteen to get a junior operator's license you have to have a burner permit for a year and you have to have forty hours of supervised driving that includes six hours of night time driving and then you get your junior operators license and then there's a restriction for the first few bunts of having passengers ride with you so those limitations are in place and for those junior operators they are prohibited since two thousand and nine from using any portable handheld electric the electronic device or even the hands free phone so that does apply to the junior operators and for  graduated driver license system it's been in effect for i want to say about eight years and it really we're extremely pleased with the results we're seeing clashes go down in that age group and that's that's very encouraging it really is very courage and i just read a report this afternoon and the latest number on fatals in vermont for this year is thirty four and you know thirty four is a number but what we have to keep in mind those were all individuals those were thirty four tragedies those are thirty four families that have lost a loved one so i we all have to work collectively to try to make the highways safer and you know we operate under what's called the for ease of highway safety and that's in force but you have to have good laws out there engineering you have to have you know good roads to make sure that they are safer and i think that we see that with improvements of the way the roads are designed with the with the with the guards and so forth you have to have education you know good education in the public schools in the private driver education schools and the thirty that we concentrate on is emergency responses you know when you look at some of the rescue squads around the state you have some extremely talented people that if you're involved in some type of crash and you're injured you know that the probability of you being delivered to the hospital quickly and having your situation stabilizes greater so there have been a lot of improvements in the highway safety arena and that's why the number of deaths have been going down and you know what we're part of the national goal our our goal is zero deaths and i think that the law that took effect october first you know it may not be the be all end all but i think it's a step in the right direction and i think all of these little pieces when i add them together will make our highways safer highway safety standpoint this last year and as you would know there was a lot of bills out there there were over twelve hundred bills introduced between the two chambers and in my opinion i think that this was an extremely productive year from a highway safety standpoint there were some some bills that went through like the cellphone ban that i think is very positive but we talk about junior operators and this really was a constituent based issue and it was a woman from waterbury who's twenty year old these was visiting her for the summer from california and the niece had a longer permanent and the art wanted to give her driver's license driver training instruction over the summer the problem is vermont was one of the few states that didn't recognize a litter permit from another jurisdiction well at the urging of this constituent we have the law changed so now vermont does recognize that we have a person has to meet our minimum standards you know you have to be at least fifteen years old you have to have you know a licensed driver over twenty five or driver instructors so you know that was that was a good thing for me the driving standpoint in that same regard we have recognized junior operator licenses from other jurisdictions but they weren't subject to our graduated driving license restrictions so the law was changed and said if you have a junior operator permit from another jurisdiction will recognize that but you're subject to the same restrictions that of vermont junior operator person is oh a lot of positive things from a legislative standpoint to get back to your question you know what do we do we're charged as the lead agency for commercial vehicle enforcement so we've got twenty one uniformed inspectors all the way stations and so forth that that you see with the with the inspectors with the big black trucks out there that what they're doing is they're checking vehicles to weigh them to make sure that they're not overweight damaging the roads that they're not over dimensioning over height over with that the drivers have proper credentials that they have been driving too long you know you don't want somebody driving an eighty thousand pound tractor trailer of it's been everything you know if people can get a driver's license they can perpetrate a whole bunch of different frauds so we have people that have that investigated energy theft title fraud odometer tampering we oversee about fifteen hundred licensed inspection stations we've got about eight hundred licensed car dealers we we monitor we have a safety unit it is in charge of people transportation issues they oversee all the private driver training schools and we also do the vermont rider education program which is a twenty hour motorcycle safety course and we train about eight hundred students a year so we do a lot of stuff that is a lot of it is that it is a lot so it just  demonstrates the sometimes we talking legislature about the investment of taxpayer dollars and government and public safety is such a huge segment that it's not just public health than things all the work that public does but all of the traffic safety and highway safety which is not necessarily a way high on the radar but it is constant work that's being done all the time to keep people safe you know is i mentioned to you earlier and as much as i hate to admit it i've been in law enforcement for forty years i was a burlington police officer for twenty five years and i had attained the rank of deputy chief in charge of police operations and pat mcdonald who is the quest for motor vehicles back in two thousand said s had to come to work for me and i jumped at that opportunity and i really have a great appreciation for the type of work that goes on in the agency of transportation when we're looking at the air quality issues of you know vehicle idling and so forth of you know some of the large trucks that we that we see that would be spewing the black smoke you want pressing issues like that it's extremely interested and it's very diverse and you're absolutely right there's a there's a lot of exciting things going on so with all of the work that you're doing you somehow became designated as the chief of the new law for heads up phones down  and we really appreciate your coming to richmond and talking about the new law i do think that it's a good thing for people to realize that you have there is a website if you google and vermont if you go to that website it'll have information on the water level cues and as i mentioned they actually have a guide that you can go to and will tell you of the different the different types of devices that you can use and as i've said technology is not my friend but i set up the phone in my car and it took about three minutes so it was pretty straightforward oh ok well thank you very much appreciate your well thank you here and with that we'll say good night