The Michigan House of Representatives Tuesday (April 20th) reconsidered a key public safety measure to ban texting while driving, announced state Rep. John Proos.
“Distracted driving is dangerous driving, plain and simple,” said Proos, R-St. Joseph. “It was found that people who send text messages while driving are 23 more likely to be in a crash or near crash event than nondistracted drivers according to a study done by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. The study evaluated trucks driving over 6 million miles of road.”
The legislation approved Tuesday makes driving while texting a primary offense under the law, meaning that it can be used as a reason to pull a driver over, similar to the seat belt law. The ban allows exemptions for drivers reporting traffic accidents, medical emergencies and criminal activity.
The Pew Internet Project and the University of Michigan conducted nine focus groups with teens ages 12-18 between June and October 2009 where the topic of driving and mobile phones was addressed. They found that one in three texting teens ages 16-17 say they have texted while driving and 48 percent of all teens ages 12-17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting.
Twenty-nine states have passed laws to regulate cell phone use while driving, while six states, the District of Columbia, and some local governments have enacted outright bans of cell phone use while driving. Legislation has been introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives (HR 3535) and the U.S. Senate (S. 1536) that would reduce by 25 percent the federal transportation funds distributed to states that do not pass a state text messaging ban.
A total of 91 percent of Americans think that driving while texting is as dangerous as drunk driving, according to a 2007 Harris Interactive poll. Young people in particular are at danger, as 66 percent of drivers age 18 to 24 admit to sending text messages while driving.
Source: News release from Michigan House Republicans
Editor’s Note: Mark McGlothlen has written an interesting column for the Three Rivers Commercial-News on the subject of texting while driving. To access the online version of the column, click on the following link: Dnt txt whl drvng
