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MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Silver Foundation will host its third annual Senior Summit on Saturday, April 27.
The summit, a special day dedicated to Lake County seniors and elders, will be held at Twin Pine Casino and Hotel Event Center in Middletown from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Entry is free to seniors age 60 and over.
The popular event has exceeded expectations in prior years, organizers said.
“We are planning for 250,” said event organizer Olga Martin Steele. “We can add a few more but we are asking folks to pre-register by April 19 to ensure we have enough food and seats.”
Online registration is the best way to sign up but those who prefer can register by calling 707-998-1302. Another way to register is by filling out paper applications, which will be available at most senior centers in the county.
The theme for the third annual summit is health and wellness. The Silver Foundation has again partnered with Hospice Services of Lake County, which is taking reservations for the vendor fair booths.
“We’ll have 25 booths with information to help us stay healthy in our silver years. Every booth will be loaded with useful information you must have,” said Foundation Board member Gene Paleno.
Those interested in reserving a booth should contact Kristy Weiss of Hospice Services at 707-263-6270, Extension 112, orThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
“The event will feature a fabulous lunch, entertainment by the Clearlake Clikkers and the Mendo-Lake Singers, information booths, raffles every 30 minutes, Inspirational Senior Awards, a keynote speaker and more,” said Silver Foundation founder and president, Jim Steele. “And for those who enjoy a game of chance, the event hosts, the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians, are throwing in some free play to boot.”
“I attended the first and second summits. It’s just wonderful to see our silver generation treated with such honor and respect,” said Rae Eby-Carl, also a foundation board member said. “I will be at the registration desk along with other volunteers to greet everyone that comes through the door. I can’t wait to see all the familiar faces as well as newcomers.”
Inspired by seniors for seniors, the day is one of a kind.
“There’s nothing else like this in Lake County,” said Jim Steele. “One of the event highlights is when we give out the Inspirational Senior Awards. It gives you a sense of how much seniors have done for, and given back to, the community.”
For information on how you can support the Silver Foundation or to sponsor this year or next year’s Senior Summit, call 707-998-1302 or visit www.lakecountysilverfoundation.com.
The summit, a special day dedicated to Lake County seniors and elders, will be held at Twin Pine Casino and Hotel Event Center in Middletown from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Entry is free to seniors age 60 and over.
The popular event has exceeded expectations in prior years, organizers said.
“We are planning for 250,” said event organizer Olga Martin Steele. “We can add a few more but we are asking folks to pre-register by April 19 to ensure we have enough food and seats.”
Online registration is the best way to sign up but those who prefer can register by calling 707-998-1302. Another way to register is by filling out paper applications, which will be available at most senior centers in the county.
The theme for the third annual summit is health and wellness. The Silver Foundation has again partnered with Hospice Services of Lake County, which is taking reservations for the vendor fair booths.
“We’ll have 25 booths with information to help us stay healthy in our silver years. Every booth will be loaded with useful information you must have,” said Foundation Board member Gene Paleno.
Those interested in reserving a booth should contact Kristy Weiss of Hospice Services at 707-263-6270, Extension 112, or
“The event will feature a fabulous lunch, entertainment by the Clearlake Clikkers and the Mendo-Lake Singers, information booths, raffles every 30 minutes, Inspirational Senior Awards, a keynote speaker and more,” said Silver Foundation founder and president, Jim Steele. “And for those who enjoy a game of chance, the event hosts, the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians, are throwing in some free play to boot.”
“I attended the first and second summits. It’s just wonderful to see our silver generation treated with such honor and respect,” said Rae Eby-Carl, also a foundation board member said. “I will be at the registration desk along with other volunteers to greet everyone that comes through the door. I can’t wait to see all the familiar faces as well as newcomers.”
Inspired by seniors for seniors, the day is one of a kind.
“There’s nothing else like this in Lake County,” said Jim Steele. “One of the event highlights is when we give out the Inspirational Senior Awards. It gives you a sense of how much seniors have done for, and given back to, the community.”
For information on how you can support the Silver Foundation or to sponsor this year or next year’s Senior Summit, call 707-998-1302 or visit www.lakecountysilverfoundation.com.
New findings have emerged about five tiny moons nestled in and near Saturn's rings.
The closest-ever flybys by NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal that the surfaces of these unusual moons are covered with material from the planet's rings — and from icy particles blasting out of Saturn's larger moon Enceladus.
The work paints a picture of the competing processes shaping these mini-moons.
"The daring, close flybys of these odd little moons let us peer into how they interact with Saturn's rings," said Bonnie Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Buratti led a team of 35 co-authors that published their work in the journal Science on March 28. "We're seeing more evidence of how extremely active and dynamic the Saturn ring and moon system is."
The new research, from data gathered by six of Cassini's instruments before its mission ended in 2017, is a clear confirmation that dust and ice from the rings accretes onto the moons embedded within and near the rings.
Scientists also found the moon surfaces to be highly porous, further confirming that they were formed in multiple stages as ring material settled onto denser cores that might be remnants of a larger object that broke apart. The porosity also helps explain their shape: Rather than being spherical, they are blobby and ravioli-like, with material stuck around their equators.
"We found these moons are scooping up particles of ice and dust from the rings to form the little skirts around their equators," Buratti said. "A denser body would be more ball-shaped because gravity would pull the material in."
"Perhaps this process is going on throughout the rings, and the largest ring particles are also accreting ring material around them. Detailed views of these tiny ring moons may tell us more about the behavior of the ring particles themselves," said Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker, also at JPL.
Of the satellites studied, the surfaces of those closest to Saturn – Daphnis and Pan – are the most altered by ring materials.
The surfaces of the moons Atlas, Prometheus and Pandora, farther out from Saturn, have ring material as well – but they’re also coated with the bright icy particles and water vapor from the plume spraying out of Enceladus. (A broad outer ring of Saturn, known as the E ring, is formed by the icy material that fans out from Enceladus' plume.)
The key puzzle piece was a data set from Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, or VIMS, which collected light visible to the human eye and also infrared light of longer wavelengths.
It was the first time Cassini was close enough to create a spectral map of the surface of the innermost moon Pan. By analyzing the spectra, VIMS was able to learn about the composition of materials on all five moons.
VIMS saw that the ring moons closest to Saturn appear the reddest, similar to the color of the main rings. Scientists don't yet know the exact composition of the material that appears red, but they believe it's likely a mix of organics and iron.
The moons just outside the main rings, on the other hand, appear more blue, similar to the light from Enceladus' icy plumes.
The six uber-close flybys of the ring moons, performed between December 2016 and April 2017, engaged all of Cassini's optical remote sensing instruments that study the electromagnetic spectrum. They worked alongside the instruments that examined the dust, plasma and magnetic fields and how those elements interact with the moons.
Questions remain, including what triggered the moons to form. Scientists will use the new data to model scenarios and could apply the insights to small moons around other planets and possibly even to asteroids.
"Do any of the moons of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune interact with their thinner rings to form features similar to those on Saturn's ring moons?" Buratti asked. "These are questions to be answered by future missions."
Cassini's mission ended in September 2017, when it was low on fuel. Mission controllers deliberately plunged Cassini into Saturn's atmosphere rather than risk crashing the spacecraft into the planet's moons. More science from the last orbits, known as the Grand Finale, will be published in the coming months.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the U.S. and several European countries.
More information about Cassini can be found at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/cassini.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – This week, dozens of law enforcement officers from around Lake and Mendocino counties participated in an active shooter response training in Lakeport.
The Lakeport Police Department coordinated the training with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which taught two 16-hour Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, or ALERRT, sessions at Clear Lake High School, which is closed for spring break.
Participants were trained to respond alone or with a group of officers to an active shooter call with a priority of stopping the threat.
This training is part of the ALERRT program, based at Texas State University, and was certified for credit in this state by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST.
Approximately 55 officers from 12 local and state agencies attended this training including Lakeport Police Department, Clearlake Police Department, Ukiah Police Department, Willits Police Department, Cal Fire law enforcement for the Lake and Mendocino County area, California Department of Fish and Wildlife for Lake and Mendocino counties, California State Parks – Clear Lake Sector, California Highway Patrol – Clear Lake Area, Lake County District Attorney’s Office Investigations, Lake County Probation Department, Lake County Sheriff’s Office and Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.
The Lakeport Police Department said this week’s training is the fourth such training class held in Lakeport over the past 10 months in which approximately 115 local officers were trained.
The agency thanked the FBI, ALERRT, POST, all attending agencies as well as the Lakeport Unified Safety Committee, Lakeport Unified School District and Clear Lake High School “for making this valuable training happen to further our ongoing effort to keep our schools and communities safe.”
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A team of researchers with the University of California, Berkeley, are planning a focus group this month as part of an effort to understand how Spanish-speaking residents evacuated during last year’s Mendocino Complex.
The focus will take place from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 13, at the Lakeport Courthouse Museum, 255 N. Main St.
To be eligible, participants must have been evacuated or received an evacuation order for the 2018 Mendocino Complex – which included the Ranch and River fires that began in July and continued until September – and they must speak Spanish as the primary language at home.
The focus group will be conducted in Spanish. Participants must sign up through an online form at https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Sj4eewMMgXcTaJ or by calling 925-895-7897.
Participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis; it’s limited to one participant per household. For those chosen to participate, each person will receive a $100 Amazon Gift Card; lunch also will be served.
Stephen Wong, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate and part of the team that is conducting the focus group, said their goal is to hear the evacuation stories of Spanish-speaking individuals and develop strategies that could uniquely assist them in future disasters across California.
“We’re conducting four focus groups across California,” Wong told Lake County News.
The groups are focused on how people make decisions in evacuations. He said participants are asked what they did – if they evacuated or not – and what notifications they may have received.
“We want to get a better picture of how Spanish speakers navigated the evacuation process in the Mendocino Complex,” Wong said.
The other focus groups included low-income residents of Southern California impacted by the 2017 fires and two focus groups in Napa and Sonoma counties for the October 2017 fires for those age 65 and older and those with disabilities. Those focus groups already have taken place, he said.
Wong said they also are conducting ongoing, in-depth surveys for the 2017 Southern California fires and the 2018 Carr fire in Redding.
He said Spanish speakers may have challenges in communications and so may not understand evacuation orders.
If there aren’t contingencies in place for multiple languages, “It creates a real challenge,” said Wong, adding that it also leads to difficulties for finding resources for recovery.
Public resources often aren’t enough to shelter or evacuate everyone, and Wong said the research is looking at how the “sharing economy” – peer to peer or business to peer transactions that occur over the Internet, including private companies like Uber and Lyft – can be leveraged in such situations.
He said it opens the possibility of partnerships between public and private entities to build stronger neighborhood networks, and how a sharing economy could produce a more equitable response to a disaster.
The team will build statistical models to determine what influences a person to evacuate or not. Wong said they also will look at why people choose a public shelter, the home of a friend or family member, or why they choose to go to certain locations, such as the Bay Area or out of state.
They’re also hoping to have a specific journal article that relates to the sharing economy and whether it’s equitable or not in such situations.
Wong said the group completed a report on Hurricane Irma that goes in depth into a similar kind of modeling, looking at evacuee behavior and offering key takeaways and agency recommendations. Among their findings so far is that evacuation orders actually work.
He said the different aspects of the research will come into a final report that will be presented to policy makers and agencies as well as be published. It will document the 2017 and 2018 wildfires and the evacuation process.
Wong said an idea behind the research is that agencies can implement these ideas directly into emergency response plans and evacuation plans.
The Spanish announcement for the focus group is below.
Investigadores de la Universidad de California, Berkeley están llevando a cabo un grupo focal en el área del condado de Lake y Mendocino sobre la evacuación del incendio del complejo de Mendocino (Ranch Fire y River Fire).
Grupo Focal: Hispanohablantes
Sábado, 13 de abril: 12:00 p.m. a 2:00 p.m.
Lakeport Courthouse Museum: 255 N Main St, Lakeport, CA 95453
Requisitos
1) Haber evacuado o recibido una orden de evacuación durante el incendio del Complejo de Mendocino en 2018. (Ranch Fire o River Fire en julio)
2) Hablar español como el idioma principal en casa.
Cada persona elegida para participar recibirá una tarjeta de regalo de Amazon por $100. Los participantes serán seleccionados por orden de llegada. Solo un miembro por hogar. También se servirá almuerzo.
Si está interesado, por favor complete el siguiente formulario: https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Sj4eewMMgXcTaJ o llame al 925-895-7897.
Email Elizabeth Larson atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
The focus will take place from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 13, at the Lakeport Courthouse Museum, 255 N. Main St.
To be eligible, participants must have been evacuated or received an evacuation order for the 2018 Mendocino Complex – which included the Ranch and River fires that began in July and continued until September – and they must speak Spanish as the primary language at home.
The focus group will be conducted in Spanish. Participants must sign up through an online form at https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Sj4eewMMgXcTaJ or by calling 925-895-7897.
Participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis; it’s limited to one participant per household. For those chosen to participate, each person will receive a $100 Amazon Gift Card; lunch also will be served.
Stephen Wong, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate and part of the team that is conducting the focus group, said their goal is to hear the evacuation stories of Spanish-speaking individuals and develop strategies that could uniquely assist them in future disasters across California.
“We’re conducting four focus groups across California,” Wong told Lake County News.
The groups are focused on how people make decisions in evacuations. He said participants are asked what they did – if they evacuated or not – and what notifications they may have received.
“We want to get a better picture of how Spanish speakers navigated the evacuation process in the Mendocino Complex,” Wong said.
The other focus groups included low-income residents of Southern California impacted by the 2017 fires and two focus groups in Napa and Sonoma counties for the October 2017 fires for those age 65 and older and those with disabilities. Those focus groups already have taken place, he said.
Wong said they also are conducting ongoing, in-depth surveys for the 2017 Southern California fires and the 2018 Carr fire in Redding.
He said Spanish speakers may have challenges in communications and so may not understand evacuation orders.
If there aren’t contingencies in place for multiple languages, “It creates a real challenge,” said Wong, adding that it also leads to difficulties for finding resources for recovery.
Public resources often aren’t enough to shelter or evacuate everyone, and Wong said the research is looking at how the “sharing economy” – peer to peer or business to peer transactions that occur over the Internet, including private companies like Uber and Lyft – can be leveraged in such situations.
He said it opens the possibility of partnerships between public and private entities to build stronger neighborhood networks, and how a sharing economy could produce a more equitable response to a disaster.
The team will build statistical models to determine what influences a person to evacuate or not. Wong said they also will look at why people choose a public shelter, the home of a friend or family member, or why they choose to go to certain locations, such as the Bay Area or out of state.
They’re also hoping to have a specific journal article that relates to the sharing economy and whether it’s equitable or not in such situations.
Wong said the group completed a report on Hurricane Irma that goes in depth into a similar kind of modeling, looking at evacuee behavior and offering key takeaways and agency recommendations. Among their findings so far is that evacuation orders actually work.
He said the different aspects of the research will come into a final report that will be presented to policy makers and agencies as well as be published. It will document the 2017 and 2018 wildfires and the evacuation process.
Wong said an idea behind the research is that agencies can implement these ideas directly into emergency response plans and evacuation plans.
The Spanish announcement for the focus group is below.
Cuéntenos Su Historia –
Grupo Focal sobre la Evacuación del Incendio del Complejo de Mendocino.
Investigadores de la Universidad de California, Berkeley están llevando a cabo un grupo focal en el área del condado de Lake y Mendocino sobre la evacuación del incendio del complejo de Mendocino (Ranch Fire y River Fire).
Grupo Focal: Hispanohablantes
Sábado, 13 de abril: 12:00 p.m. a 2:00 p.m.
Lakeport Courthouse Museum: 255 N Main St, Lakeport, CA 95453
Requisitos
1) Haber evacuado o recibido una orden de evacuación durante el incendio del Complejo de Mendocino en 2018. (Ranch Fire o River Fire en julio)
2) Hablar español como el idioma principal en casa.
Cada persona elegida para participar recibirá una tarjeta de regalo de Amazon por $100. Los participantes serán seleccionados por orden de llegada. Solo un miembro por hogar. También se servirá almuerzo.
Si está interesado, por favor complete el siguiente formulario: https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Sj4eewMMgXcTaJ o llame al 925-895-7897.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Pacific storms are moving over Northern California, bringing more rain, mountain snow and high winds.
The National Weather Service said a series of storms are lined up over the Pacific, ready to move into Northern California over the next few days.
Forecasters said the heaviest rain and mountain snow is expected on Friday afternoon as the strongest of these systems passes through.
A forecast of heavy winds and rain has led the National Weather Service to issuing a wind advisory that will in effect through 8 p.m. Friday.
The advisory covers Lake County’s northern mountain area.
It calls of winds up to 45 miles per hour, which could lead to downed trees, power outages and difficult driving conditions, the agency said.
The Lake County forecast also anticipates winds elsewhere in the county, with gusts above 25 miles per hour.
At the same time, rain and possible thunderstorms are predicted for Friday, with rainy conditions forecast to continue through Tuesday evening.
Conditions are expected to be clear from Tuesday evening through Wednesday night, with chances of showers on Thursday.
Daytime temperatures through Thursday will range from the high 40s to low 50s over the weekend, and into the high 50s and low 50s next week. Nighttime temperatures will range from the low to mid 40s through next week.
Clear Lake’s level continues to remain in “monitor” stage, which is above 8 feet Rumsey, the special measure for Clear Lake.
Early Friday the lake was above 8.15 feet Rumsey. Its level has continued to decline in recent weeks, despite continued rain.
Email Elizabeth Larson atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
The National Weather Service said a series of storms are lined up over the Pacific, ready to move into Northern California over the next few days.
Forecasters said the heaviest rain and mountain snow is expected on Friday afternoon as the strongest of these systems passes through.
A forecast of heavy winds and rain has led the National Weather Service to issuing a wind advisory that will in effect through 8 p.m. Friday.
The advisory covers Lake County’s northern mountain area.
It calls of winds up to 45 miles per hour, which could lead to downed trees, power outages and difficult driving conditions, the agency said.
The Lake County forecast also anticipates winds elsewhere in the county, with gusts above 25 miles per hour.
At the same time, rain and possible thunderstorms are predicted for Friday, with rainy conditions forecast to continue through Tuesday evening.
Conditions are expected to be clear from Tuesday evening through Wednesday night, with chances of showers on Thursday.
Daytime temperatures through Thursday will range from the high 40s to low 50s over the weekend, and into the high 50s and low 50s next week. Nighttime temperatures will range from the low to mid 40s through next week.
Clear Lake’s level continues to remain in “monitor” stage, which is above 8 feet Rumsey, the special measure for Clear Lake.
Early Friday the lake was above 8.15 feet Rumsey. Its level has continued to decline in recent weeks, despite continued rain.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
California drivers continue to shift their focus away from the road and onto their phones, despite the risks associated with multitasking behind the wheel.
April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and the California Office of Traffic Safety, or OTS, the California Highway Patrol and Impact Teen Drivers, or ITD, will be working together throughout the month to educate drivers on the importance of traveling free of distractions, as well as cracking down on drivers who violate the state’s hands-free cell phone law.
“Cell phones are working against us in the fight against distracted driving,” OTS Director Rhonda Craft said. “The hope is that a combination of education and enforcement will drive people to change bad behaviors for the better.”
According to preliminary data from the CHP, 66 people were killed and more than 6,500 injured in 2017 from distracted driving related crashes.
In 2018, the CHP issued more than 109,000 citations for violations of the hands-free cell phone laws.
On April 4 and April 18, the CHP will conduct a statewide enforcement effort to discourage distracted driving.
“Through a combination of high visibility enforcement efforts, a focused education campaign, and cooperation from the motoring public, preliminary data shows the number of inattentive drivers involved in crashes is on the decline,” said CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley. “Ultimately, the goal is to increase voluntary compliance with the law, while keeping people safe on the road.”
A 2018 observational study by the OTS on driver cell phone use found that approximately 4.5 percent of drivers were seen using a cell phone, a nearly 27 percent increase from 2017, but down from 2016, when 7.6 percent of drivers were observed using a cell phone.
“Clearly, there’s more work to be done to curb distracted driving,” Craft said. “The observational survey gives us an idea on where we stand and that we still have our work cut out for us.”
Impact Teen Drivers partners with traffic safety organizations across the state to educate California’s newest drivers on the dangers and consequences of reckless and distracted driving. Driver distraction is the primary cause of crashes involving teen drivers.
“Each year, we could fill eight large yellow school buses with the number of teens we lose to preventable car crashes in California alone,” Impact Teen Drivers Executive Director Dr. Kelly Browning said. “The first week of April is also California Teen Safe Driving Week, and it’s a good time to remind everyone that we need to always keep two hands on the wheel, two eyes on the road, and most importantly keep our mind focused on our driving. Remember to be an alert and engaged passenger at all times – after all, fifty percent of the teen driving fatalities last year were passengers being driven by another teen driver.”
Distracted driving laws have been on the books since 2008. The CHP and the OTS remind drivers that under the 2017 hands-free cell phone law, drivers are not allowed to hold a wireless telephone or electronic wireless communications device while driving a motor vehicle.
April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and the California Office of Traffic Safety, or OTS, the California Highway Patrol and Impact Teen Drivers, or ITD, will be working together throughout the month to educate drivers on the importance of traveling free of distractions, as well as cracking down on drivers who violate the state’s hands-free cell phone law.
“Cell phones are working against us in the fight against distracted driving,” OTS Director Rhonda Craft said. “The hope is that a combination of education and enforcement will drive people to change bad behaviors for the better.”
According to preliminary data from the CHP, 66 people were killed and more than 6,500 injured in 2017 from distracted driving related crashes.
In 2018, the CHP issued more than 109,000 citations for violations of the hands-free cell phone laws.
On April 4 and April 18, the CHP will conduct a statewide enforcement effort to discourage distracted driving.
“Through a combination of high visibility enforcement efforts, a focused education campaign, and cooperation from the motoring public, preliminary data shows the number of inattentive drivers involved in crashes is on the decline,” said CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley. “Ultimately, the goal is to increase voluntary compliance with the law, while keeping people safe on the road.”
A 2018 observational study by the OTS on driver cell phone use found that approximately 4.5 percent of drivers were seen using a cell phone, a nearly 27 percent increase from 2017, but down from 2016, when 7.6 percent of drivers were observed using a cell phone.
“Clearly, there’s more work to be done to curb distracted driving,” Craft said. “The observational survey gives us an idea on where we stand and that we still have our work cut out for us.”
Impact Teen Drivers partners with traffic safety organizations across the state to educate California’s newest drivers on the dangers and consequences of reckless and distracted driving. Driver distraction is the primary cause of crashes involving teen drivers.
“Each year, we could fill eight large yellow school buses with the number of teens we lose to preventable car crashes in California alone,” Impact Teen Drivers Executive Director Dr. Kelly Browning said. “The first week of April is also California Teen Safe Driving Week, and it’s a good time to remind everyone that we need to always keep two hands on the wheel, two eyes on the road, and most importantly keep our mind focused on our driving. Remember to be an alert and engaged passenger at all times – after all, fifty percent of the teen driving fatalities last year were passengers being driven by another teen driver.”
Distracted driving laws have been on the books since 2008. The CHP and the OTS remind drivers that under the 2017 hands-free cell phone law, drivers are not allowed to hold a wireless telephone or electronic wireless communications device while driving a motor vehicle.