Driver holding cellphone guilty of distracted driving: court

A Vancouver motorist who transferred his cellphone from the seat beside him into his pocket has been convicted of distracted driving.

The incident happened while Mehrzad Movassaghi was driving northbound along Granville Street on the evening of Dec. 9, 2017.

A police officer testified that he was in an unmarked police pickup truck when he noticed Movassaghi’s vehicle passing him slowly on his left.

When he looked in through the passenger side window he saw the driver holding a cellphone in his right hand, the screen brightly lit and pictures visible.

The officer pulled Movassaghi over and issued the distracted driving ticket.

Movassaghi agreed with the officer’s version regarding the positioning of the vehicles and that his car was passing the police truck.

However, he testified that he had simply picked up his Samsung Galaxy cellphone from the passenger seat with his right hand and then put it in his pocket. He denied the screen was lit or that there were any pictures.

In his ruling on the case, Provincial Court Judicial Justice Brent Adair concluded that, without in any way discrediting the officer’s account, he accepted the driver’s testimony about the handling of the phone.

Movassaghi’s lawyer argued that he didn’t deserve the ticket and cited a recent Provincial Court decision which concluded that simply holding an electronic device was not sufficient for a conviction.

But Adair said that the comment in the prior ruling was “simply wrong ” and did not take into account the plain wording of the Motor Vehicle Act, or the pre-existing case authority.

Adair said a conviction was justified if the defendant was driving or operating a motor vehicle and that the cellphone was being held however briefly in a position in which it may be used, keeping in mind the numerous possible uses of such devices.

The maximum fine for distracted driving is now $368. In Movassaghi’s case, after he argued he had no prior driving record and the circumstances of the offence were at the low end of the spectrum, his penalty was reduced to $150.