Governor, We Need Specific Laws For Behind The Wheel, Too

Published 4:10 pm Thursday, February 28, 2013

Talk about a past-due bill.

The no-texting while driving bill on Governor McDonnell's desk is years over due. The legislation would finally make texting while driving a primary offense, with a $250 fine for the first offense and $500 for the second or subsequent violation.

Currently, texting behind the wheel is a secondary offense, which means the police must pull a motorist over for another offense, and the first offense fine is merely $20, rising to $50 for any subsequent offense.

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Governor McDonnell's office, however, has not said whether he will sign the bill, which also sets a minimum $500 penalty for a reckless driving conviction if the motorist was texting at the time.

Sign it, Mr. Governor.

Motorists who are texting while driving are 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident than those who simply-believe it or not-focus on driving while driving, argue the legislation's supporters.

The problem is pervasive. A survey last year revealed two out of 10 motorists text behind the wheel. Many of us have had close encounters of the potentially worst kind with texting motorists. They are the ones driving while looking down at their cellphones instead of through the windshield. We see them but they do not see us.

The National Transportation Safety Board unanimously recommends that all 50 states ban texting, emailing and or talking on cellphones while driving. “We're not here to win a popularity contest,” NTSB chairperson Debra Hersman told the Associated Press, as we noted in this space last year. “No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life.”

No kidding.

But does Governor McDonnell agree, at least with the no-texting issue.

During one of his weekly broadcasts on Washington, D.C.'s WTOP, Governor McDonnell expressed faith in Virginia's existing blanket laws on driving violations to take care of the specific danger of texting while driving a gasoline-filled piece of metal 60 or 70 miles an hour down a highway crowded with other gasoline-filled pieces of metal, all carrying human beings to some destination.

“In Virginia we do have general laws on reckless driving, on improper driving, aggressive driving and other laws like that that cover a multitude of conduct,” the governor said during a November broadcast. “What we don't have is specific laws to ban specific types of conduct, whether it's texting or being on the phone.”

But, Mr. Governor, we have plenty of specific laws banning specific types of conduct for people once they get outside those cars. You can't assault people, you can't rob them, you can't rape them, you can't murder them, you can't defraud them. The list goes on and on like a highway, and very necessary laws they are, too.

We do not accept one or two general laws for conduct outside of motor vehicles. Virginia doesn't have a blanket law that urges pedestrians to generally behave themselves once they get out of their cars. No, we have specific laws for specific pedestrian behavior, such as a ban against stealing something that belongs to somebody else.

We need specific laws aimed at specific activities that should be made illegal, and that need applies when we are behind the wheel just as it does once we get out of our cars.

“So, we've got the blanket laws already that I believe are sufficient. And so we don't single out particular conduct,” the governor said, forgetting the multitude of laws that single out particular conduct once we get out from behind the wheel.

Blanket laws that don't specifically ban texting while driving do, on the other hand, have something very much in common with blankets. They lead to more blankets being spread over the faces of people at crash scenes who had their lives stolen from them by a texting motorist.

Let's get specific, Governor McDonnell.

-JKW-