Governor Cuomo’s office says the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee is studying the technology behind the device known as a “textalyzer.”
Instead of helping police tell if a driver has been drinking, it can read their smartphone and see if they were texting while behind the wheel.
Police would either find your phone at the scene of a crash or ask you to hand it over on a traffic stop. They attach it to a tablet running the “textalyzer” software. It doesn’t read your texts, but tells police when it was sent and what you were doing on your phone.
The governor says people continue to use hand-held cellphones while driving despite the new laws, putting themselves and others at risk of death. He says the panel will also look at the constitutional implications of using the device.