McLeish Orlando Partner, and founding member of the Coalition for Vulnerable Road User Laws, Patrick Brown, sat down with Mike Stafford and Supriya Dwivedi of The Morning Show on AM640 on November 1st, 2019 to discuss 'textalyzers'. Textalyzers are devices that are used to implement a controversial proposed technology that will allow police to test your cell phone at the side of the road to see if you have been using it behind the wheel.
The device is a part of a debate due to privacy concerns. Patrick Brown is urging Ontario to implement the devices as it is, "something the city needs". "We're getting statistics that over 50% of people are using these devices while driving, and this distracted driving is killing and injuring people," says Brown. Patrick Brown believes that this needs to be put under control. "The device isn't to detect the information on the phone, but it checks for time stamps (swiping or texting), it looks for the activity on the phone, not the content of the activity," he states.
"From a civil standpoint, we see these crashes. They go up on sidewalks, and hit mothers and children, and clearly they were using the phone, but according to the police they have a difficult time getting a summons to access the records because no one witnessed the person looking at the phone," says Brown. "You can hand out all of the fines. The fine isn't really the answer. You can't hand out a penalty unless you catch them."
Click here to listen to the full episode.
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