The deaths of two women in Peoria in a car accident reportedly caused by a driver sending text messages on a cell phone has renewed the drive of one legislator to outlaw the practice.
“I already know I was going to be bringing it back next year, but the deaths brought it up again,” Rep. Steve Farley, D-28, said. “I knew this was so important that I’d never let go of this bill.”
Last session, Farley sponsored a bill to prohibit text-messaging while driving, but the measure was never considered by the House Transportation Committee. He says he will file similar — and perhaps more strict — legislation next year.
But a chairman of a legislative committee tasked with considering transportation measures says there is no need to create a law specific to text-messaging because statutes already on the books address the issue.
“Text-messaging while driving is a bad idea, clearly, but we already have laws against distracted driving,” Sen. Ron Gould, R-3, said. “The mere addition of another law on the books wouldn’t solve anything.”
Peoria police investigators believe 18-year-old Ashley Miller of Glendale drifted across the center line of Lake Pleasant Parkway Aug. 13 because she was text-messaging on her cell phone. Miller’s pickup truck collided with a PT Cruiser driven by Stacey Stubbs, 40, of Chino Valley, police said. Stubbs died at the scene while Miller, who was thrown from her vehicle, died a day later.
Investigators checking Miller’s cell phone for emergency contact numbers found a text message sent at the same time as the crash.
Deaths spark national debate
The Peoria fatalities are the latest in a string of car accidents involving drivers who are text-messaging. In June, a 22-year-old Gilbert driver hit a parked police car that had its emergency lights flashing after being distracted by sending text messages on her cell phone.
Later that month in New York, text messages were sent and received on a 17-year-old driver’s cell phone moments before her sport-utility vehicle slammed head-on into a truck, killing her and four other teens, police told USA Today.
The deaths have stoked the fires of a national debate over text-messaging, as more states scramble to implement laws regulating the use of cell phones while driving. Washington is the only state that has approved legislation explicitly outlawing text-messaging while driving. The law takes effect Jan. 1. Other states, meanwhile, are expected to draft similar legislation.
Farley’s measure last year, H2129, was never heard in the House Transportation Committee, something he attributes to partisan politics.
“I think having a ‘D’ after [my] name definitely had something to do about it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate if politics has to get in the way of what’s right for Arizona.”
That committee’s chairman, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-22, did not return several messages left on his cell phone and at his office.
But Gould, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, says he would have prevented such a bill from getting a hearing this year and will do so next year, if a similar measure is assigned to his committee. But he wouldn’t chalk up his decision to politics.
“I stand on principle — I’m an equal opportunity bill-holder,” he said. “I’m not really concerned with who sponsored the bill.”
Gould said the key to preventing more needless deaths is to have police officers more aggressively enforce existing distracted-driving statutes.
“It’s the fact that if you’re not paying attention you need to be cited for that,” he said. “I don’t care what the distraction is, if it’s using the cell phone or eating a hamburger.”
Farley, though, makes a distinction between text-messaging and other distracting activities.
“When you’re texting, you’ve got to be looking at your keyboard or looking at your screen, whether you’re typing or reading,” he said.
The end result, Farley said, is that the level of distraction from text-messaging while driving is “just as if that person was dead drunk.”
While the earlier bill proposed fines of $50 for a first violation or $200 if the person cited is involved in an accident, Farley said he may increase the penalties next year. He also said he was contemplating making driving while texting a primary offense, meaning police officers could pull a driver over if they saw him or her using the phone to send text messages.