{"id":21754,"date":"2025-06-20T23:36:35","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T05:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/distracted-driving-crashes-fall-statewide-montezuma-county-citations-rise\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:09:16","slug":"distracted-driving-crashes-fall-statewide-montezuma-county-citations-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/distracted-driving-crashes-fall-statewide-montezuma-county-citations-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"Distracted-driving crashes fall statewide; Montezuma County citations rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=4842837c-3edd-53c8-b058-f7557a712311&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1200\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Statewide, car crashes caused by inattentive driving are down; in Montezuma County, citations for such are marginally up.<\/p>\n<p>That might be because of the state\u2019s new \u201chands-free law,\u201d which went into effect Jan. 1  and made \u201cholding a cellphone or other mobile devices while driving illegal,\u201d according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.codot.gov\/news\/2025\/june\/inattentive-driving-crashes-down-19-in-first-five-months-of-new-law\" id=\"link-4359104a6eaad6ab67e955ffd810480b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a news release from CDOT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe law is intended to reduce the number of crashes that involve inattentive or distracted drivers,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>In the first five months of 2025, CDOT reported 1,161 crashes caused by inattentive driving across the state.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s 19% down from the 1,432 crashes during that same window last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is promising news ahead of the summer driving season, a time when traffic deaths tend to spike,\u201d the news release reads.<\/p>\n<p>In Montezuma County, Colorado State Patrol was unable to tell how many crashes were attributed to inattentive driving. They did, however, tell <em id=\"emphasis-3e433d584b38d92e6a8f796a17096f58\">The Journal<\/em> that so far this year, there has been one citation in Montezuma County and four in neighboring La Plata County.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLooking at the data, we had no traffic stops that resulted in a citation for inattentive driving in 2024,\u201d said Wendy Forbes, the director of strategic communications and outreach at Colorado State Patrol.<\/p>\n<p>Drivers \u201cviolating the new hands-free law\u201d face \u201ca $75 fine and two license suspension points for the first offense,\u201d the news release said. \u201cRepeat offenders face higher fines and more license suspension points.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If first time violators prove they purchased a \u201chands-free accessory\u201d like bluetooth headphones or dashboard mounts, that $75 can be waived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>there were zero citations; there are now five for Montezuma and La Plata counties<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77444,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754\/revisions\/77444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21754"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}