If you missed it, sometime contributor and friend of GraniteGrok, JR Hoell (see also NHFC, Rebuild, and so on), was ticketed for violating New Hampshire’s wholly useless and likely dangerous hands-free law. Anyone driving can attest to the accuracy of that last sentence. A lot of people ignore it. Many create more serious hazards by trying to use their phones with them in their lap. It’s a mess.
In short, JR was on a call using his vehicle’s hands-free technology (also recognized as no safer than holding the phone to your own ear) and was driving with the phone in his hand but with both hands on the steering wheel. He was pulled over and cited for violating RSA 265:79. But instead of paying the fine, he argued that he had not broken the law as written.
After what appears to be a dismissive and uncaring trial court ruling of guilt, JR appealed all the way to the State Supreme Court, where he won. As written, what JR was doing did not violate the law.
The court has reviewed the written arguments and the record submitted on appeal and has determined to resolve the case by way of this order. See Sup. Ct. R. 20(2). The defendant, Joseph Hoell, Jr., appeals an order of the Circuit Court (Spath, J.) finding him guilty of violating RSA 265:79-c (2024), “Use of Mobile Electronic Devices While Driving; Prohibition,” because he was “holding his cellphone . . . while driving his car.” On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial court erred because, although he was holding his cellphone while driving, he was not “using” his cellphone in a manner prohibited by RSA 265:79-c. We agree and reverse.
This bit of semantic clarity almost rivals that of a case where a Granite Stater was charged with violating the state’s gun laws – accused of concealing a “loaded” weapon in his glove box. There was a firearm and a separate loaded magazine, but there was no ammunition in the handgun. None. The State’s high court concluded that when the legislature referred to a “loaded” concealed firearm, ammunition needed to be in it to qualify. That case was dismissed, and not long after, New Hampshire became a constitutional carry state. And no blood in the streets as predicted by the mangy narrative mules on the left.
I don’t expect that level of sanity to infect the culture around the so-called hands-free ban. Virtue-signaling meddlers on both sides of the aisle have long sold the measure – and protected it since its passage – with emotional pleas about saving lives. I think they mean the lives of kids who didn’t die from drug overdoses or were neutered as a result of other policies they defend.
Despite the marketing, there’s no evidence the hands-free law did any of the things promised, but no one seems ready to expend political capital on a campaign to show that in a meaningful enough way to get it repealed. But maybe we don’t have to, or at least not exactly.
HB411 “establishes that the offense prohibiting the use of mobile electronic devices while driving is a secondary offense only enforceable when a driver of a motor vehicle has been stopped for a suspected violation of another provision of Title XXI or some other offense.“
This bill has a hearing tomorrow at 10:20 at the LOB, room 203 (Transportation Committee). Show your support. Prior to the hands-free law, New Hampshire already had a distracted driving law. HB411 would be a first step toward getting rid of the pre-crime nature of hands-free enforcement altogether and allowing the distracted driving statute to do that job instead.
You can read the entire State Supreme Court decision here.
