District police officials said they are now ticketing people more frequently for talking on their cell phones while driving, according to NBC4.com.
Police said they will continue to give out occasional warnings and they will also hand out $100 citations to drivers who hold the cell phone in their hands to talk while driving. Only the use of a hands-free cell phone device is permissible under current District law, NBC4.com reported.
According to NBC4.com, District police handed out 8,300 cell phone citations to drivers in 2006, an 11 percent increase over the 7,500 citations issued the previous year.
The District's cell phone law, which was passed in 2004, was aimed at reducing the number of accidents caused by cell phone-related driver inattention. National Traffic Safety Administration and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute statistics show that nearly 80 percent of all cases the groups studied were caused by driver inattention, NBC4.com reported.
