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Sat 4 Apr, 2009 02:01 pm
REDDING, Calif. " A woman who crashed into a line of stopped vehicles while text-messaging on her cell phone has been sentenced to six years in a California prison for killing a woman in one of the vehicles.
Deborah Matis-Engle was sentenced Friday by a judge in Redding, Calif.
Investigators said Deborah Matis-Engle was speeding and text messaging when she slammed into the vehicles stopped at a construction zone in August 2007.
Shasta County prosecutor Stephanie Bridgett said the 49-year-old woman had paid several bills by cell phone in the moments before the crash.
She was in the middle of one of those transactions when she struck a vehicle that burst into flames, killing 46-year-old Petra Winn.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Stotter said he will appeal.
Right, not her fault, she'd been turned into a zombie.
And California lawmakers were so appalled that they wrote a law against the practice that includes a nominal fine....WTF, in a lot of places the standard fine for driving without a seat belt is $100. Texting is a real and present danger to others, unlike lack of seatbelt use, and yet it is not taken seriously. There was recently a rail head on in California that was the result of one of the engineers texting, he ran a red signal and killed a bunch of folks.
Quote:Beginning on January 1, Californians who type or read text messages while driving will face a traffic ticket and fine, under a law signed Wednesday by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
California State Bill 28 "specifically bans the use of an electronic wireless communications device to write, send, or read a text-based communication while driving a motor vehicle." Drivers who violate the law will face a "base fine of $20 for a first offense and $50 for each subsequent offense
http://commonlaw.findlaw.com/2008/09/new-california.html
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