BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. — Blue Springs Lake is the perfect place for Kansas City-area residents to go if they’re looking for a weekend on the water but don’t want to go to the Lake of the Ozarks.
“Until Monday,” Grandview resident Tara Stecklein told FOX4 Friday when asked how long she’ll be at Blue Springs Lake.
Other people we ran into on Friday said they’re just going to be out on the lake for a few hours.
“The sun comes up, it gets kind of hot, we pull off and go back home and relax,” Grain Valley resident Robert Piedimonte said when asked why he would only stay out on Blue Springs Lake for a few hours. “It’s a nice lake. There’s plenty of size. If you want to let the boat stretch out a little bit, you can do that, too.”
The Missouri State Highway Patrol has a reminder for those people boating and the ones driving to get to a place like the Lake of the Ozarks.
“Put the phone down,” MSHP Sgt. Andy Bell said in an interview with FOX4 Friday. “It’s the law now. Put the phone down.”
Missouri’s new distracted driving law even bans holding the phone if you’re driving. If you’re receiving a call, you’ll have to go hands-free.
“Yeah, so we would hope that you would do a voice prompt,” Bell said when asked what you should do if you need to make a call while you’re driving. “If it’s to call the wife, ‘Hey Siri, call the wife.'”
It’s a secondary violation law, though, so you can’t be pulled over for texting and driving or making a call unless you were swerving, speeding or failing to use your turn signal as you switched lanes. Then you could be cited for being on your phone.
When it comes to drinking, Bell reminded people to designate someone to be behind the wheel, whether you’re out on the water or on the roads.
“Don’t drink and drive,” Stecklein said Friday. “It costs about $10,000, so an Uber is definitely cheaper. Even Lyft is cheaper.”
Bell said one-third of all traffic deaths are a result of impaired driving, and the holiday weekends like Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day are when those crashes most often occur.
He also said the highway patrol will be stepping up its enforcement Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night, since so many people will be off on Monday.
