Everyone knows — or they should — that it’s illegal to hold a cell phone while you’re operating a vehicle in the District of Columbia. But based on the number of citations police have again recorded this year, there’s more evidence that most people just don’t care.

According to the Washington Examiner, the city has handed out more than one million dollars in citations for gabbing while driving, the second consecutive year they’ve hit that milestone. Based on projections, the city figures to hand out somewhere close to the 13,395 tickets they handed out last year, if not more. That would continue the upward trend in such fines since the law went into effect in 2004.

Obviously, the city is making a decent chunk of change off the law, which is good, especially in these lean times. But we may have reached the point where people just don’t care whether they’re punished or not, and factor in any potential hit to their wallets as the cost of doing business. (This isn’t the first time we’ve broached this hypothesis.) After all, is the ban really doing that much to increase safety when the number of drivers caught breaking the law is increasing year over year?