Kelsey's Law in Effect for Teen Drivers in Bloomfield

Kelsey's Law took effect Thursday in an effort to curb a disturbing trend in cell phone-related car crashes among teen drivers in Michigan. 

And despite some challenges, local police departments are adjusting and strategizing how to enforce the law because of it's potential impact, officials said. The legislation was named for Kelsey Dawn Raffaele, a 17-year-old Sault Ste. Marie girl who died in a car crash in 2010 while she was using her cell phone.

The devastating consequences of not addressing the problem became crystal clear to Sgt. Craig Shackleford of the Bloomfield Township Police Department earlier this week when he heard a presentation from Raffaele's mother, Bonnie, at the 18th Annual Traffic Safety Summit in Lansing.

The event — which draws public officials, service providers and public safety personnel together to focus on traffic-safety improvements — focused heavily on cell phone-related crashes, what some researchers are now calling the top reason children over the age of 1 die in America.

"It was a very somber and heartfelt presentation, really from the heart," Shackleford said Thursday. "This is just a terrible statistic, and it's worthy to put an effort toward enforcement, and worthy of community support."

According to the bill signed into law earlier this year, any driver stopped for a moving violation with a temporary drivers permit or a level 1 or 2 graduated license - meaning any driver under the age of 17, could face a civil infraction for using a cell phone.

Experienced officers that are already keen to trends and visible cues of distracted driving should not have a problem adding the new requirement to the list of regularly-enforced traffic violations, officials at multiple departments said Thursday. The difficulty will be being able to determine who is within the age range, Shackleford said.

"It does present a bit of a challenge for law enforcement to figure out if the driver is under that age restriction or not," he said. "Hopefully, the word has gotten out and they'll put their cell phone in 'park'."