Pennsylvania drivers will soon face citations for holding a phone behind the wheel, as enforcement of the state’s new hands-free law begins Friday.<\/p>\n
The measure, known as Paul Miller’s Law, prohibits drivers from holding a cell phone while operating a vehicle, even when stopped in traffic or at a red light. The law follows a one-year warning period.<\/p>\n
Paul Miller, a 21-year-old from Scranton, was killed in a 2010 crash caused by a distracted tractor-trailer driver. His mother spent more than a decade advocating for a hands-free requirement, and the bill was signed into law last June.<\/p>\n
“The ban that was already in place was a texting while driving ban. That went into effect many years ago,” said Jana Tidwell, an AAA spokesperson. “Pennsylvania did not have a handheld cell phone ban until Paul Miller’s Law went into effect a year ago, again, with the waiting period, and then citations begin tomorrow. Pennsylvania was the last state in this area.”<\/p>\n
The new enforcement marks a significant shift for drivers who may have treated the warning period as lenient. Officials say that grace period is now over.<\/p>\n
The law’s supporters hope the change will reduce distracted driving and prevent tragedies like the one that claimed Miller’s life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania drivers will soon face citations for holding a phone behind the wheel, as enforcement of the state’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9776,34339,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-211064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-cell-phone","tag-paul-miller","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}