Daily Newsie Busted By Bike Cop for Texting At Ground Zero

There she was. Stopped at the light reading the messages on her Blackberry when Marie McGovern noticed a Motorcycle cop looking at her. To her credit she did not start screaming and saying how she had a sick child in the trunk on her way to the hospital. She just followed police instructions pulled over right at Ground Zero and accepted her $130 summons.

According to the Daily News, New York City issues 530 cell phone tickets per day....Do the math and all of a sudden financial solvency becomes a possibility through good police work.

Hands free is still OK. Unless you are licensed by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission. That's right. NY City Yellow Cabs must be legally parked for the driver to engage in cell phone activity..... like talking. So Cabby's, if your lips are moving and there is no passenger in the back seat, you can expect to pay $130 to Mr. Bloombergs Finance Dept. And of course lets not forget that the TLC can also levy a taxi specific fine, but you would have to be given a TLC summons for this. Who issues the TLC summons? NYPD. Twofers?

A member of the NY City Taxi Commission, The late Marvin Greenberg, once responded to a rep from AT&T who was making the pitch for cell phone use as a good thing. In his wisdom Mr. Greenberg, an orighinal member of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission made a statement similar to the following "Son, you remind me of the tobacco execs who claimed that they did not believe cigarettes cause cancer. I vote no"

At that point he and the entire NY City Taxi Commission voted to ban cell phone use by taxi drivers unless the cab was legally parked.....It should be noted that this was done more than ten years ago. Well ahead of the curve.

So, unplug New York City, the call can wait.