Most of you have probably done it. You hear a ding or feel that all too familiar faint  buzz, and tell yourself there’s no harm in taking a quick glance at the screen–I mean it could be important. But as harmless as a quick text from behind the wheel might seem, texting while driving can be incredibly dangerous. Looking to put a stop to the trend, New York lawmakers are considering legalizing technology that would help police bust distracted drivers.

Dubbed the “Textalyzer,” or Breathalyzer for texting, the device would allow authorities at the scene of an accident to immediately search drivers’ phones to see if they were using them at the time of the crash.

If passed, the law would come to be known as Evan’s law, for 19-year-old Evan Lieberman, who died in a 2011 head-on-collision that was later found to be the result of a distracted driver.

Evan’s father, Ben Lieberman, worked with New York State Senator Terrence Murphy (R-Westchester) and Assembly Assistant Speaker Felix Ortiz (D-Kings) to introduce the bipartisan bill, which has already been approved by New York’s state senate committee on transportation, but is still pending in the finance committee.

“The general public knows distracted driving is a problem, but if people knew the extent of the damage caused by this behavior, they would be amazed,” said Lieberman in a press release. “With our current laws, we’re not getting accurate information because the issue is not being addressed at the heart of the problem—with the people causing the collisions.”

The plugin technology, currently being developed by Israeli tech developer Cellebrite, would report the exact time a phone was used, but not provide access to any content—keeping conversations, contacts, numbers, photos, and application data private.

Similar initiatives have been introduced in Tennessee, New Jersey, and the city of Chicago. However, privacy proponents worry the technology could still be used to record driver’s personal information without their consent or a warrant.

“Every fender bender would become a pretense for gobbling up people’s private cellphone information, and we know that cellphones typically contain our entire lives,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman, who is no relation to Ben Lieberman.

According to Fortune, the proposed law states that “every person who operates a motor vehicle in the state shall be deemed to have given consent to field testing of his or her mobile telephone and/or personal electronic device for the purpose of determining the use thereof while operating a motor vehicle.”

Ultimately Lieberman hopes the technology will act as deterrent for would-be distracted drivers and serve as resource for police officers to collect more extensive data on these types of situations.

“The last thing I want to do is be responsible for legislation that is going to infringe on someone’s privacy,” he told NBC News, “but I also don’t want to bury another child.”

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Is Snapchat partially to blame for accidents caused by “Snapping” while driving? A new lawsuit places some responsibility on the company after an 18-year old driver, Christal McGee, of Hampton, Georgia, caused an accident while using the filter that records speed while in motion. The complaint was filed by Wentworth Maynard, an Uber driver who was hit by McGee while she was traveling at 107 miles per hour.

The accident occurred in September 2015 when McGee was driving home from work in her father’s Mercedes with three of her coworkers in the backseat, one of whom was pregnant. She began to speed down Tara Boulevard, a highway with a 55 MPH speed limit, and pulled out her phone to use the app once she hit 100 MPH. The suit alleges that she was trying to earn a new “trophy” on Snapchat, which is what motivated her to hit that speed. At the same time, Maynard’s car began to pull onto the highway, and the distracted McGee was unable to slow down sufficiently to avoid a collision.

The resulting accident left Maynard with permanent brain damage, detailed in a blog post on a local law firm’s site. McGee’s passengers fared better, and were only treated for “cuts and bruises.” McGee herself faced a head injury, but was conscious enough to post a Selfie from the ambulance letting people know that she was “lucky to be alive.”

Christal McGee caused a serious accident while speeding & using snapchat then took a selfie in the stretcher. #fail pic.twitter.com/ZlKlO1nEFn

— Jess Clackum (@JessicaClackum) April 28, 2016

Maynard’s suit claims that Snapchat should have been aware that the filter would have led to users “putting themselves and others in harm’s way in order to ‘capture a snap’.” It’s not the only case of its kind: the post also mentions similar cases in Brazil and the UK where accidents occurred while using the filter. So, is Snapchat to blame for inviting such behavior in the first place?

The company provided the following response to TechCrunch:

No Snap is more important than someone’s safety. We actively discourage our community from using the speed filter while driving, including by displaying a ‘Do NOT Snap and Drive’ warning message in the app itself.

While Snapchat isn’t responsible for the reckless behavior of its users, it also probably shouldn’t be rewarding “trophies” for it. And why does the “MPH” filter even exist in the first place? The Snapchat craze joins texting and calling as an additional form of distraction for drivers, maybe making the roads a little less safe for us all.

Mariam Jaffery

Mariam was an Executive Assistant at Law Street Media and a native of Northern Virginia. She has a B.A. in International Affairs with a minor in Business Administration from George Washington University. Contact Mariam at mjaffery@lawstreetmedia.com.

The post Snapchat Faces Lawsuit After App Usage Causes Car Accident appeared first on Law Street.

Bruce Jenner, the Olympian and former patriarch of the Kardashian/Jenner clan, was involved in a car crash in Malibu, California yesterday. The four-car pile up left one driver dead and a few others with minor injuries. While it seems like the crash itself is a pretty routine, although tragic, reality of driving a car in the United States, there may be more to it than that.

The story is a sad one–a white Lexus stopped short in front of Jenner’s car on a road in Malibu after stopping to avoid another car in front of it. Apparently it was on a part of the road that is difficult to navigate. According to evidence from the scene of the accident, Jenner appeared to slam on the brakes in an attempt to avoid the Lexus; however, he wasn’t able to stop his car in time, and hit the back of the Lexus, pushing it into oncoming traffic. The Lexus was hit by a Hummer, and the resulting impact left the driver of the Lexus dead.

The Sheriff’s department has opened a vehicular manslaughter investigation. The department has said that everyone involved–including presumably, Jenner–is cooperating with the investigation.

There have been many rumors floating around about what exactly happened during the accident. Jenner is claiming that members of the paparazzi were following him; however, the police say that’s simply not true. In response to the paparazzi rumors, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lt. John Lecrivain said:

That is a very regular occurrence, and (there is) no indication at this time it was a contributing factor of the crash.

If Jenner was trying to get away from the paparazzi, it makes sense that he would be driving too close to the car in front of him, maybe trying to get around the Lexus, or just in a frustrated rush. There’s also the chance that it wasn’t a member of the paparazzi following him, but Jenner just thought the paparazzi was after him. In the age of smartphones and easy-to-access cameras, passersby could have seen Jenner and tried to grab pictures of him. In addition, Jenner has been in the news a lot lately–an amateur paparazzo could have fooled him.

There are also rumors that he may have been using his cell phone at the time of the crash. According to news reports earlier today, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department started looking into Jenner’s phone records to see if he was texting and driving at the time of the collision; however, even if they do find something, it might be hard to prove that the phone played a factor. It’s difficult to determine if a phone was actually being used at the exact time of the collision.

Whether or not there will be any legal ramifications for Jenner remains to be seen. It’s obviously good that he’s cooperating with the police, but that doesn’t guarantee that he’ll come out scot-free. While it may have been a total accident, if there was anything that Jenner did that contributed to it, he may be on the hook.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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