> Legislators seem to love to do this. They deliberately write these laws using vague terms like "using" and then expect people (and the courts) to read their minds later on.
I don’t think it’s as intentional as you think. Writing rules to cover every situation ahead of time is extremely hard.
Even writing simple rules for something like an Internet forum or Discord has proven time and time again to be more difficult than anyone predicts. People will find loopholes in everything and real world situations will expose edge cases you never would have been able to predict.
Is it unrealistic to include something like an "abstract/summary/intent" with the law? Something like
> This law is intended to make it illegal for the driver of a motor vehicle to use a mobile device in a way that it is distracting to the goal of driving safely. One one end, holding it in one hand up to their head while talking to someone, or playing a visual game on it, would be distracting and negatively impact their ability to drive. On the other end, having it mounted on their dashboard and using it as a source of GPS would be considered reasonable. While it's true that any level of "use" of a mobile device can prove to have some level of distraction, the goal of the law is to allow such uses where it's clear the benefit of the use (to driving or health) outweighs the negatives.
^ The intent there is to demonstrate the idea of "a summary of intent", not to put forth what the summary should be. Don't sweat the details of my wording.
Agreed. I remember thinking, at the time it was enacted, that it would solve the problem of people holding their phones and being distracted. Nope. Hopefully this gives the CHP (and other orgs) the mandate to give tickets.
I don’t think it’s as intentional as you think. Writing rules to cover every situation ahead of time is extremely hard.
Even writing simple rules for something like an Internet forum or Discord has proven time and time again to be more difficult than anyone predicts. People will find loopholes in everything and real world situations will expose edge cases you never would have been able to predict.