LAS VEGAS — A Nevada woman recently got in trouble with a state trooper.
The charge?
Driving while using … Chapstick.
State troopers tell KLAS that doing that behind the wheel is no joke.
On the morning of April Fools’ Day, Stephanie Fragoso was at a red light at the I-15 and Blue Diamond when she was pulled over and cited.
“He said, ‘putting on makeup,’ and I told him it was Chapstick,” Fragoso recalled.
She thought the ticket was a joke. No one was laughing.
“He said it could have been anything, you could have been drinking water, shaving your legs,” Fragoso said.
It turns out the citation was 200 bucks plus points against her driving record. She was in tears for one reason.
“I just wish I would have known about it,” she said.
It’s a city and county ordinance State Trooper Loy Hixson says most people don’t know about.
“It states that when a person is operating a vehicle that they must provide full attention to the driving so as not to render that action to be unsafe,” Trooper Hixson said.
In other words, you can get a ticket for anything that takes your eyes off the road or hands off the wheel. It’s one of many distracted driving tickets police statewide are writing more of. So don’t just think about electronic devices like cell phones anymore.
“They may be eating. I have seen men that are actually shaving with their electric razors and at one time, I was actually driving down the 95 and a lady had her iPad velcroed to her steering wheel and she’s watching a movie,” Trooper Hixson said.
But how far is too far?
“It may be something that a person may be having a medical condition or episode of some type and we’re not gonna obviously issue a citation,” the trooper said.
Each ticket is issued on a case-by-case basis, and in this case, it’s a hard lesson Fragoso never wants to learn again.
