Geneva Ranked No. 1 in Suburbs in Texting Enforcement

Texting is tough to police.

We're not talking Internet policing, or "sexting" or any of that. We're talking driving, and the serious danger in which we put ourselves, pedestrians and other drivers when we text while we're behind the wheel.

In the most recent installment of "Fatal Distraction," a multipart series by the Daily Herald, Marni Pyke shows just how tough it is for local law-enforcement agencies to clamp down on texting and driving. And she rates 22 police departments on their performance.

It's a very inciteful, investigative piece that counted up results from 41,700 tickets and clearly took a lot of work. It's also a valuable public service, because it's the type of journalism that can save lives. The DH report notes that, in 2009, 5,474 people died in crashes related to distracted driving.

The front page of the DH today (Dec. 20) shows a graph that ranks municipalities by the number of texting tickets written in relation to the total number of tickets written. You can read the story by subscribing to the Daily Herald and visiting here.

Geneva is at the top of the list.

That's good news, no doubt. And the department deserves kudos for taking the law seriously. But we need to look at the numbers a little more closely and with some perspective before we get too congratulatory—or too upset, if you're of the mind that there are more important things for law enforcers to do.

Geneva is at the top of the list because 5.9 percent of the tickets police issue are for texting violations only. 

The next closest is Lake Zurich, with 2.5 percent, then Schaumburg with 1.9 percent, Carol Stream with 1.4 percent, Wheaton with 1.3 percent, and the percentages drop from there, all the way to Elgin, Grayslake and Rosemont, which had zero percent.

According to the graph, Geneva issued 426 tickets for speeding, texting or special zones (the law that prohibits drivers from using a cell phone in a school or construction zone) and 25 tickets exclusively for texting.

To its credit, Geneva also did well in the cell-phone-in-school-zone category, with 44 tickets. The number of special-zone tickets is 10.3 percent of Geneva's total tickets issued.

There are two quick things to understand, however. The first is that Geneva doesn't issue tickets very often. In most traffic stops, drivers in Geneva are given warnings. In other towns, the hammer comes down harder and more quickly. Geneva issued a total of 426 tickets between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, according to the DH. During the same time period, Naperville issued 8,343.

The second is that Geneva's total number of texting tickets is 25, but it's not the highest total. Naperville issued 62, Schaumburg 53, Carol Stream 42 and Lake Zurich 30.

Still, and all things considered, the numbers indicate that Geneva merits being No. 1 on the list. Pound for pound, our Police Department is the best in the Western Suburbs at respecting and enforcing the distracted-driving laws.

And that's just one more good reason that we should, too.