Miles Files: Beware of freeway cell phone law Miles Files: Beware of freeway cell phone law (November 16, 2005)

By Miles McMullin
Special to the Almanac

Did you know you could get a ticket for pulling over on the side of the freeway and using your cell phone? My mom and I didn't believe it either until it happened to her.

She was driving along Interstate 280 when she thought she had a flat tire. She pulled over and checked all her tires. They weren't flat so she was about to keep on driving. Then her cell phone rang.

She picked it up to talk and decided to stay off the freeway rather than to drive 65 mph while talking and risking people's lives. She was talking for only a few seconds when she looked up in her rear-view mirror and saw the dreaded red and blue spinning lights.

An officer had pulled up behind her. He came to the car window and asked her if she had an emergency. My mom replied: "No, I'm fine, thank you. I thought I had a flat tire, but I don't. I am just finishing my phone conversation then I will go onto the freeway. I don't want to drive and talk."

The officer then walked around her car, and said, "You don't have a flat tire do you?" My mom then said, "No. I am fine, thank you."

Then he said: "I'm going to give you a ticket."

My mom was in disbelief. "What? Why?" she said.

The officer replied: "You are not in an emergency. No person shall stop, park, or leave standing any vehicle upon a freeway. And you are on your cell phone talking and sitting on the side of the freeway without an emergency."

She said to the person on the phone: "I have to hang up now. I am getting a ticket for talking to you."

Then she said to the officer: "You would rather have me driving 65 mph talking on my cell phone, risking people's lives than to have me here on the side of the road talking for a few minutes?"

The officer had no reply except the scratching of a pen on his yellow sheet of paper.

My mom, of course, was frustrated. She kept asking the officer why it was safer to drive and talk than to sit on the side of the road for one minute.

He said nothing. I think you know what my mom was thinking but we can not print it here.

So, she took the ticket, which was marked with the code violation of 21718 -- non-emergency stop on freeway; on cell phone. She came home and told us the story, and we started asking everyone we knew if he or she had heard of this law. No one had.

Everyone we asked thought it was absurd. But it is the law. So the moral is, don't use your cell phone on the side of the freeway if it is not an emergency. Save yourself a $146 ticket.
Miles McMullin is a ninth-grader at Menlo-Atherton High School.

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