Girl strangled by her own wheelchair as bus monitor texted, checked Instagram
Cell phones are magnets for our attention, but you can, of course, face significant legal jeopardy for giving them that attention. Just ask the "safety driver" of an Uber self-driving vehicle, which hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018. According to authorities, the driver was watching The Voice on Hulu just before the crash—and was then charged with negligent homicide.
These kinds of cases are always tragic because they feel so easily avoidable, but they also happen with enough regularity that it's easy to tune them out. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,308 people were killed by distracted drivers in 2022 alone—and "texting is the most alarming distraction."
That's why states continue to crack down on cell phone use while driving. A Colorado law that went into effect on January 1, for instance, bans a driver from using any mobile electronic device unless it is hands-free. Thirty US states now have such bans in place.
But a trial that wrapped up in New Jersey this week caught my attention, because it is one of the sadder and stranger examples of cell phone-mediated distraction while in a vehicle. A young girl died, and a 28-year-old woman is probably going to jail, but this is not your typical tale of texting while driving. Texting was involved—34 times, in fact—but driving had nothing to do with what happened.
