Papillion police are raising awareness about the dangers of being a distracted driver or pedestrian.
“Distracted drivers and pedestrians are becoming an epidemic of everyday life,” Police Chief Scott Lyons wrote on Facebook Thursday morning.
In the post, Lyons says he often encounters drivers texting on the road or people distracted by their phones while walking in crosswalks. Lyons says students and children can put themselves in danger by not being aware of their surroundings.
"Sometimes, our children walking to and from school are at the biggest risk due to their natural propensity to become distracted or inattentive," he wrote.
Lyons says laws in the state of Nebraska are not enough to deter drivers and pedestrians from being distracted by mobile technology.
“Legal interpretations of these statutes also vary amongst our many jurisdictions based upon the specific facts of each case,” Lyons wrote in the Facebook post. “In general, the enforcement of "Texting While Driving" is only as a secondary action when a driver of a motor vehicle has been cited or charged with a primary traffic violation or some other offense. Therefore, police officers cannot always intervene due to insufficient primary cause to initiate the traffic stop.”
