Cellphone tickets up 177% in Regina

Cellphone tickets in the Queen City have gone up immensely.

The latest numbers from Regina police show that officers issued 177 tickets for cellphone charges in February 2017 – up 185 per cent from the year before when 62 tickets were issued for the month.

Year-to-date, including January and February, tickets were up 176.6 per cent.

Police Chief Evan Bray suggested tougher laws are getting through to people and that his officers are putting more focus on distracted driving.

“I think the changes in the legislation have given more teeth to the legislation and we know that the likelihood of conviction in court when we do any sort of enforcement activity is a lot higher,” he said.

Bray added that the request for public enforcement has also gone up.

“We field a lot of just public complaints and concerns about the number of people distracted driving on the roadway, we get them (complaints) in various different ways,” he said. “We’ve had lots of people reporting like, ‘I was driving down Albert Street and I saw a bus that didn’t have a police officer but I wanted to let you know this lady in this car was using her cellphone,’ we get a lot of that kind of stuff.”

The most common way people report a distracted driver, according to Bray, is through the Regina Police Service website or simply by calling the non-emergency line at the police station.

Getting caught using a cellphone behind the wheel can result in a $280 fine.