SANTA CRUZ - If you talk and drive, use a hands-free device or be prepared to meet your local law enforcement officer.

California Highway Patrol officers up and down the Central Coast will spend Monday and Tuesday "aggressively" looking for motorists violating the state's "hands free" cell phone law. In effect for two years, state law bans drivers from talking on a cell phone while driving unless they use a hands free device.

The two-day enforcement effort is aimed at reducing collisions and promoting traffic safety, according to officer Sarah Jackson of the California Highway Patrol. The targeted enforcement is from Santa Cruz to Ventura. Similar "zero tolerance" enforcement campaigns have taken place across the state in the past few months, Jackson said.

According to the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System, in 2008 more than 30,000 drivers in California were involved in traffic collisions where inattention played a role. More than 1,000 of those drivers identified a cell phone as the inattention. Cell phones are the No. 1 identifiable inattention stated on collision reports.

The message from the CHP and local law enforcement agencies is simple: no phone call or text message is worth a human life.

Santa Cruz CHP Lt. Les Bishop said, "Not only do multitasking drivers put themselves at risk, they also increase the risk of injuring or killing their passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians or innocent victims traveling in another vehicle."