Michigan's Texting Ban: One Step Forward, Too Many Steps Back

146 THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 28:1cellphone use is up, and for this purpose the campaign has been effective. 141By this performance metric, the NHTSA’s campaign has been a success. 142As of the September 2010 report, the enforcement effort netted a combinedtotal of 9,402 citations for drivers using a hand-held cellphone or texting—only 584 of which were attributable to drivers caught texting or emailing. 143Notably, the number of citations issued between the first and second wavesof the enforcement effort did decrease overall, most significantly for thenumber of citations issued for texting in Hartford (279 in the first wave and21 in the second wave); however, the number of texting citations didincrease from the first to the second wave in Syracuse (115 and 169,respectively). 144 Possibly the most important data—the percentage ofdrivers observed texting on the roads—indicate that the campaign has hadan effect on people texting while driving. 145 “The percentage of peopleobserved manipulating their phones” in each community before and aftereach wave is expressed in Figure 1 below:141. See id. at 6–7.142. See id. at 7 (“Changing driver behavior presents a challenge, but highvisibility enforcement campaigns are a proven countermeasure in a variety of trafficsafety areas. The intent of a high visibility enforcement campaign is not to issuetickets. Rather, the intent is to deter drivers from engaging in that particularbehavior in the first place. In other words, if drivers violate a particular law, thereshould be a high certainty that they will receive a ticket. While issuing one citationto a motorist may persuade that person to avoid that offense in the future (known asspecific deterrence), highly visible enforcement seeks to have 100 or 1,000 otherdrivers know about that one citation so they choose to avoid that behavior (generaldeterrence).”).143. Id. at 3.144. Id.145. See id. at 5.