New Jersey ticketing drivers for eating, sipping coffee?

Police departments throughout New Jersey are participating in a statewide effort to discourage distracted driving, both through tickets and an education campaign that suggests police will treat eating and sipping non-alcoholic drinks as equivalent to texting.

The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General issued a statement noting that driver inattention has been a major contributing factor in nearly 750,000 accidents in the state since 2009, with 3,328 fatalities associated with distracted driving crashes in 2012 alone.

“This effort is a part of the national U Drive. U Text. U Pay high-visibility enforcement (HVE) campaign that combines periods of intense anti-texting enforcement coupled with advertising and media outreach to let people know about the enforcement and convince them to obey the law,” the statement adds.

After driving with an officer from Paramus, NJ, on an enforcement mission, a Fox 5 reporter suggested the police are considering texting, eating, drinking, putting on makeup, checking laptops and tablets, and watching movies all as distracted driving.

Although gorging oneself on a Triple Whopper while negotiating the Garden State’s rush-hour traffic is clearly not the safest way to pilot a vehicle, eating while driving is not explicitly prohibited by current state law.

Reps. John S. Wisniewski and Marlene Caride last year introduced a bill that would prohibit drivers from engaging in “any activity, not related to the operation of the vehicle, in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle,” however the proposal has yet to be voted into law.

Gov. Chris Christie did sign a distracted-driving bill into law last year, though it merely mandated additional signage to raise awareness of distracted driving.

New Jersey is not known as the most driver-friendly state, topping the National Motorists Association’s list of worst states for “exploiting the motoring public” through tickets, enforcement strategies, tolls and other practices.

Out-of-state drivers may also be surprised when they pull up to a gas station and attempt to pump their own gas, a violation of the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act. They may misinterpret the scolding from an attendant, who faces a fine of up to $500 for allowing a naive driver to compromise public safety by operating a pump without training certification.