Unfortunately setting a new record for distracted driving, a 58-year-old Detroit man crashed his car and died this weekend while allegedly watching porn on his smartphone. Taking place around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday while driving on I-75 in Detroit, Michigan, the man rolled his 1996 Toyota on the highway and was ejected from the sunroof of the vehicle. Detailed by CBS News, police indicated that the man was watching pornography on his mobile device at the time of the crash.
When arriving at the accident scene, police discovered that the man was not wearing any pants. The authorities believe that he was thrown from the vehicle due to not wearing a seatbelt. Police also believe the man wasn’t able to control the vehicle properly since both hands weren’t on the steering wheel at the time of the crash. Fortunately, no other vehicles were involved in the accident.
Speaking about the odd situation, Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said “We see people putting on makeup, we see people doing different things as far as hygiene, as far as reading books, it’s almost to the fact there’s so much technology out there a lot of people are more paying attention to what they’re doing other than driving their cars.”
Interestingly, Michigan police have been aggressively going after distracted drivers in another part of the state. According to CBS Detroit, East Lansing police have been using undercover operations to ticket drivers that were texting while driving. If ticketed, an East Lansing resident has to pay $210 for the first offense. That figure rises by $100 for the second offense. Police in the area are going to continue heavily ticketing drivers hoping to make an impact in reducing the number of distracted drivers on the road.
Distracted driving tickets can turn into significant levels of revenue for city government. For instance, San Antonio collected roughly $2.4 million in distracted driving fines during 2015. Police in the city issued roughly 12,000 tickets to drivers between February 1, 2015 and the end of the year.
