Texting While Driving in Hawai‘i? Watch Out For These Most Common Times and Places to Get Fined

It took lawmakers a year to revise a bill cracking down on drivers using mobile devices. We asked for a year’s worth of citations to uncover the most common places and times to get a ticket. Consider yourself warned.

Don’t grab your phone while driving–Honolulu police officers are quick to cite anyone they spot. Drivers face a heftier fine—$250 for a first offense—but they no longer have to appear in court.

Some 3,200 citations were doled out by Honolulu police officers to distracted drivers over an 11-month period under the state’s mobile electronic devices law instituted last year.

The law includes an exception for drivers who have pulled off to the side of the road and turned off their cars.

We asked the state Judiciary for statistics on thousands of citations issued statewide. We’re admittedly O‘ahu-centric, so we zeroed in on the tickets issued in Honolulu from the time the state law went into effect in July 2013 until May of 2014.

We combed through the data to find the likeliest times drivers get caught, most common intersections where citations are issued and other interesting tidbits.

PLEAS AND VERDICTS

TOP INTERSECTIONS

*Estimated number of citations

CITATIONS HOUR BY HOUR

While no time is a good time to text while driving, we counted up the citations by the hour to determine the heaviest periods of enforcement by police officers.