On March 18, a woman was speeding down Central Avenue in Columbia Heights and looking for the cell phone she had just dropped. She rear-ended a car stopped at an intersection and killed a baby, a 14-month-old. The baby was properly strapped into his car seat, but the force of the impact (remember she was speeding) caused fatal head injuries.
The woman, Jessica Howe, was charged today with criminal vehicular homicide in Anoka County.
A reconstruction of the accident determined that Howe was driving 55 miles per hour when the speed limit was 40. According to the accident report, Howe’s car left no skid marks, meaning she did not even try to stop, which makes sense since she said she was looking for her cell phone.
According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety:
Each year in Minnesota, distracted or inattentive driving is a factor in one in four crashes, resulting in at least 70 deaths and 9,000 serious injuries. The Office of Traffic Safety estimates these numbers are vastly underreported due to law enforcement’s challenge in determining distraction as a crash factor.
Talking on a cell phone while driving is an especially dangerous form of driver distraction. A few states have made it illegal to use a cell phone while driving. In Minnesota, texting while driving is prohibited but talking on a cell phone while driving is still not illegal with a few exceptions. It is time to ban cell phone use while driving.
For more information, please see “Accident Caused by a Cell Phone.”
