Texting bill could save lives
By Bob Gibson
Daily Progress political blogger

I don’t spend a lot of time texting, but my three daughters do.

They can send, receive and read text messages from the back of a classroom and a teacher or professor would never know.

Stealth texting is a learned habit, perhaps useful when whipping out a cell phone would be crass, inappropriate or just plain frowned upon.

My thumbs are too big for the little keys on my maroon-and-silver electronic link from my pocket to the world, so I don’t even try.

Texting in class may be rude and mildly inattentive in nature, but texting while driving can be deadly.

Del. Jim Scott, D-Fairfax County, has introduced a bill that could save lives and keep cars from swerving into ditches or the paths of oncoming motorists.

His House Bill 39 to prohibit text messaging while driving may be the best little safety bill in the upcoming General Assembly session, at least with a chance of passage. Lawmakers learn year after year how hard it is to keep drivers old enough to vote from using cell phones while driving. One year, a sponsor of such a bill told a story of a Northern Virginia teenager who died due to texting while driving.

Scott’s bill, as summarized on Richmond Sunlight, http://www.richmondsunlight.com/bill/2008/hb39/ would prohibit “operation of a motor vehicle, bicycle, electric personal assistive mobility device, electric power-assisted bicycle, or moped on the highways in the Commonwealth while using any wireless telecommunications device for the purpose of sending, receiving, or reading any text message.”

To the father of three daughters who presumably have enough sense not to do that, it still makes sense to outlaw a practice some in their generation already employ.

Posted by Bob Gibson on 12/13 at 07:42 PM

I don't know what to make of laws banning talking on mobile phones while driving, but this prohibition makes sense to me. That said, I think it's a little weirdly specific. Why "text" on a "wireless telecommunications device"? If it's bad to read text on a mobile phone, isn't it bad to read it on anything while driving? And why just text on phones? What about sending and receiving photographs? Video teleconferencing?

Rather than updating this law every couple of years to keep up with new technologies, can't we come up with something a bit broader?

Any bill that details a specific driver distraction is waste. There should actually be some more broad law related to driver distraction that gives the ticketing officer discretion over what is a distraction. Just take a look at all the possible distractions when you're driving and ask yourself if we need a separate law for each one. Other states have such laws, but it pains me every time I see my state (or any other) legislating specific distractions. Yes, texting while driving is unsafe, but there are many other distractions that are also potentially unsafe, such as: Tuning the radio, Changing a CD, talking to a passenger, yelling at your kids, fixing your makeup, etc...
If we want to be serious about making our roads safer, the legislature should stop wasting time on these individual distractions and come up with something more broad.

I agree that composing/reading text messages on a wireless device while operating a motor vehicle is a dangerous and potentially deadly distraction. However, the current Code of Virginia already provides provisions to address this. Otherwise would it not be necessary to have laws target each possible distraction specifically to make them illegal.

Additionally, the verbiage in Mr. Scott's bill specifies that receiving a text message is also prohibited. That would mean I could receive a text message while my wireless device is in my pocket, never read it until I exit my vehicle but still be in violation of this proposed law. At the very least, the bill should be changed to cover only creating/reading text messages.

i would like to say that u shouild NOT drive while texting....this is very dangrouse and im doing a bill on it for 8th grade american history!