Indeed, clamping down on ‘jay-walking’ has become something of a cottage industry for many police forces, with foreigners routinely finding themselves on the wrong side of the law simply for crossing the road.
But the burghers of the New Jersey borough of Fort Lee – just on the other side of the George Washington Bridge from uptown Manhattan – have taken this obsession to a new level. The local police chief has instructed his officers to issue $85 fines to anyone texting on a mobile ‘phone while crossing a road, as doing so is likely to constitute what is described in the Garden State as ‘dangerous walking’.
Texting, police chief Thomas Ripoli told ABC News, ‘is a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware’.
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