Can cops tell if you were texting?

As she steered her silver Honda Civic through the travel lane toward the exit of a parking lot along North Park Avenue, Adrian Gonzalez leaned over to her GPS to type in a new address. Then there was a bang.

Winter Park Police Officer Tony Fairbanks’ report said neither driver in the parking lot saw the collision coming.

The crash was one of 39 that have taken place so far this year in Winter Park involving distracted driving, according to records kept by the Winter Park Police Department.

Last month, Gov. Rick Scott banned another kind of distracted driving: texting at the wheel.

The law makes texting while driving a secondary offense, meaning that a driver must be pulled over for another offense first.

Drivers caught texting while committing another offense will receive a $30 ticket.

“This is going to save lives,” said Gov. Rick Scott, who signed the bill at a Miami high school. “This is going to make sure our teenagers are safe while driving, that they’re not distracted while driving.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), at least 3,300 crash fatalities in 2010 were a direct result of distracted driving. The NHTSA also reported that a driver is 23 times more likely to get in a crash while texting than while they’re focused on the road.

Sgt. Jamie Loomis of the Winter Park Police Department said that any law that keeps drivers safe is one that needs to be in place.

“I think it’s a good thing,” Loomis said. “I think that anything that can keep drivers focused on the road and focused on their driving is a good thing.”

Texting is only a part of the bigger issue of distracted driving, Loomis said. Passengers listening to loud music, eating while driving and having pets in their laps are some of the many other common distractions on the road today.

Officer Randall Morrissey, a traffic homicide investigator for the Winter Park Police Department, said the new law could help lower accident statistics.

“I do think driving distracted is a big issue that I wish more people would pay attention to,” Morrissey said. “I think we’d see a significant drop in our accident rate.”

Police officers throughout Florida are currently preparing for how they will enforce this new law. Officers are only able to issue a ticket if they have proof that a driver was using their phone in a texting matter, a new challenge for officers throughout the state.

Sgt. Kim Mojica of the Oviedo Police Department’s traffic unit pointed out that the law being a secondary offense allows drivers to make excuses for why they had their phones out in an attempt to dodge the fine.

“Once certain people get familiar with it, they’re going to find a way to get out of the ticket,” Mojica said “We, as law enforcement, can’t prove either way what they were doing.”

“It makes it a little tricky to enforce, but I wouldn’t say it’s unenforceable.”

Mojica hopes that the law will be made into a primary offence, giving officers the ability to pull over drivers at the first sign of texting.

“I really do look forward to the day that they do make it a primary stop, because I really couldn’t tell you the number of times that I’ve stopped at traffic lights, looked to the vehicle in my vicinity and people’s heads are down, they’re texting, they don’t see the lights changing and they don’t even notice that there’s a fully marked police car next to them,” Mojica said.

Loomis noted the police departments may try to access phone bills to see if drivers were texting prior to be being pulled over, but only in the instance of a traffic accident.

For now, police officers in Central Florida will have to wait and see how effective the law will be.

“I think that the state of Florida has done its due diligence and has enacted a law that truly they feel is going to make the roads a safer place,” Loomis said. “Time will tell as to whether it is an effective one or not.”