We’ve previously mentioned Florida is among the very few states that do not have any laws prohibiting texting while driving. In order for a law enforcement officer to pull over a driver for texting, the driver must have committed a primary offense first. If the Florida House has its way, however, this may soon change.

A pair of new bills has been introduced to the Florida House aimed at drivers that can’t seem to leave their phones alone when they’re behind the steering wheel. The first of these two bills, HB 47, will boost the penalties for offenders of the state’s existing Ban on Texting While Driving Law. HB 47 would upgrade the offense from a secondary to primary offense, allowing law enforcement officers to stop a vehicle if they catch the violation. The other bill HB 69 is intentionally aimed at drivers that are age eighteen or younger and it would allow officers to stop a vehicle and issue citations as a primary action.

Per a report by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, more than 650 driving citations were issued to Miami-Dade drivers in 2015, far more than any other county in all of Florida. Drivers in Broward County received just over 400 citations, while Palm Beach drivers racked up 378.

This update is brought to you by Miami traffic attorney Hochman & Goldin, P.A.  We can assist you with criminal traffic violations and are ready to answer your questions. Please call 305-665-1000 to speak with a Miami expungement attorney.

Miami-Dade County continues to spend millions of dollars in boosting its technology designed to keep its traffic moving while avoiding frequent bottlenecks. Last month, the county unveiled its newly upgraded Miami-Dade County Traffic Control Center, one of the largest centralized traffic signal control systems in the United States.

Traffic has come a long way from the large wall panel studded with thousands of lights representing signals that once served as the control system’s highlight during the late 1970s. Back then, a signal that needed to be changed required sending out a traffic engineer who would have to go and change the signal manually. Today, traffic-signal operations engineers have a large wall representing intersections across Miami-Dade and the more than 2,500 signals that control them. These engineers can change signals as necessary should a problem arise or if congestion needs to be reduced, a far cry from the days when someone needed to be sent out.

The county has worked with the Florida Department of Transportation to install more than 350 cameras that feed information to the upgraded control center, and there are 500 more of these cameras on the way. With the new cameras and upgraded software, the drive time between US 1 from Southwest 152nd Street to I-95 has been reduced by more than ten minutes.

This update is brought to you by Miami traffic attorney Hochman & Goldin, P.A.  We can assist you with criminal traffic violations and are ready to answer your questions. Please call 305-665-1000 to speak with a Miami expungement attorney.