It's OK to drink a latte while driving ... as long as you're not distracted

Relax. You can still drink coffee while driving under Washington State’s new distracted driving law, which took effect last Sunday.

And to ding you with a $99 ticket for eating a cheeseburger while driving (the law calls out eating as a possible distraction) officers would have to connect bad driving to being distracted by a meal.

“We would have to articulate how that cheeseburger caused that collision,” Washington State Patrol Capt. Monica Alexander said Friday during a media conference about the new law, sometimes called the DUI-E law.

Alexander corrected herself, so as not to blame an innocent cheeseburger. “Eating the cheeseburger," she said. "The cheeseburger didn’t do anything.”

The law was meant to increase penalties for repeated distracted driving infractions – particularly driving while using an electronic device – and to clarify the definition of distracted driving. This includes fixing one's hair, applying cosmetics and eating and drinking.

But the suggestion that officers could start writing tickets for drinking coffee, something many people do during their morning commute, caused some confusion.

Officials emphasized during the conference call that the law prohibits any activity not related to driving that interferes with the safe operation of a motor vehicle.

It's not the cheeseburger, but how the cheeseburger affects one's driving.

Before the new law took effect, drivers were prohibited from texting and holding phones to their ear. Now simply having a hand on your phone can justify a stop and a ticket, though the State Patrol is giving drivers a six-month grace period before writing the $136 ticket for using an electronic device while driving. There is now a $234 fine for the second offense in six months.

If somebody causes a wreck, and “they have ketchup on their face and half a burger in their lap, chances are they were eating when it happened,” Alexander said.

Officers would have discretion on whether to write the $99 distraction ticket on top of other tickets. This is the same policy as other secondary offenses such as driving barefoot. 

Officers will look at the “totality of circumstances” in the event of a driving infraction, Alexander said, not just whether somebody had a cheeseburger in the car or a dog in their lap.

Alexander said about 50 percent of stops by troopers result in tickets, with the other 50 percent of drivers receiving instruction on what they did wrong, and are let go with a warning.

“Sometimes we are just having a conversation,” Alexander said.

Alexander cautioned people about making the issue more confusing than it needs to be.

"Troopers are looking for what's not working," she said. "They're not looking for what's working fine." 

The new law does have exceptions for using phones, however. Drivers can use their phones to dial 911 in case of an emergency, and "minimal use of a finger" when a phone is in a dashboard cradle is allowed.

And, to clarify again, you can still drink coffee and eat.

"Legislators and policy makers didn't sit in their office and say, 'Nobody should be allowed to drink or eat while driving when making this law," said Shelly Baldwin from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.