Three of every four motorists to resolve tickets issued in the first two distracted-driving crackdowns in Syracuse this year have been convicted as charged and the cases have generated more than $132,000 in fines and surcharges. “I look at them (the numbers) and I think it’s working,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Alison Fineberg said of the program designed to...
Three of every four motorists to resolve tickets issued in the first two distracted-driving crackdowns in Syracuse this year have been convicted as charged and the cases have generated more than $132,000 in fines and surcharges.
“I look at them (the numbers) and I think it’s working,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Alison Fineberg said of the program designed to focus attention on the dangers of motorists who use their cell phones or text while driving.
Syracuse and Hartford, Conn., are the only two communities in the United States participating in the pilot program this year in which a $300,000 grant - $200,000 from the federal government and $100,000 in state funds – is being used to pay police overtime to mount a ticket-writing blitz.
A third phase of the crackdown is scheduled for Oct. 7 - 16. A fourth is set for April.
At the request of The Post-Standard, City Court officials recently put together a report on the tickets issued in crackdowns April 8 – 17 and July 22 – 31.
Most of the convictions resulted from motorists’ guilty pleas. But 152 of the April cases involve default convictions entered when the motorist failed to answer the ticket within 60 days of the scheduled court date.
There have been no default convictions in the July cases because that 60-day period has not passed, according to Chief City Court Clerk Lucia Sander.
The Department of Motor Vehicles has been asked to suspend the licenses for 109 motorists who answered April tickets but never returned to court and for 82 motorists from July who pleaded guilty but failed to pay the fines.
While the court records show about one in five of the tickets was dismissed, that didn’t mean all those motorists were exonerated, according to Sander and Fineberg. Some had the tickets satisfied by pleading guilty to another ticket from the crackdown or from other unrelated traffic matters pending.
The numbers didn’t reflect everything. City Judge Kate Rosenthal, who was assigned to Traffic Court during the April crackdown, said two things struck her: the out-of-state drivers who were “dumbfounded” they couldn’t talk on their cell phones while driving in New York and the motorists who went out and got a hands-free device.
“To me, the success is the number of people who went out and got a blue tooth,” Rosenthal said.
Read our previous coverage of the Syracuse cell phone crackdown.
| Here are numbers provided by Syracuse City Court on the outcome of cases in the city’s two crackdowns on distracted drivers. | ||
|---|---|---|
| April 8-17 | July 22-31 | |
| Tickets issued | 2,282 | 2,043 |
| Convictions (pleas and defaults) | 1,472 | 773 |
| Dismissals | 453 | 223 |
| Fines imposed | $39,650 | $17,587 |
| Surcharges Imposed | $109,090 | $50,228 |
| Collected so far* | $108,135 | $24,528 |
| *The collection continues. | ||
ConsumeReports.org writes about the Syracuse crackdown:
2010 Distracted Driving Summit: Implementing laws and campaigns
First crackdown campaign for distracted driving begins in Syracuse and Hartford