Georgia advocates against distracted driving say the tide seems to be turning in favor of their bill that would ban talking on hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel. But they weren't taking any chances Friday, as they stood in the Capitol one more time to make their case.
House Bill 673 has the goal of getting cellphones out of drivers' hands, said its author, state Rep. John Carson, R-Marietta. "This bill will save lives," he said. Behind Carson stood mothers and relatives of people killed by distracted driving, in some cases their own.
“No one should ever get that call,” said Kathy Clark, holding a picture of daughter Emily, who at 20 was rolled over by a truck driver who didn’t see traffic had stopped.
The bill ran into trouble when candidates in a Republican gubernatorial forum, including Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who oversees the Senate, seemed to throw cold water on it. The bill was tweaked, and more recently Cagle has signaled his endorsement. Next up is a vote in the powerful Senate Rules Committee, led by strong Cagle ally state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga.
If the bill passes, questions remain about what the drivers will do once the phone is mounted in a holder or connected to their on-board sound system. Drivers would be allowed to touch it then for a number of reasons, Carson said: to start or end a call, to enable voice-to-text functions or to use GPS map apps.
But that is still a big improvement on the current law, said safety advocates such as Col. Mark McDonough, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety.
“This law will place people’s hands back on the steering wheel, and it’ll place people’s eyes back on the road,” he said.
When legislators were working in 2010 on the current texting-while-driving ban, debate raged over how far to go. The end result was a law that even the bill’s sponsors admitted had flaws. They suggested the Legislature would go back and fix the confusion the following year, but that didn’t happen.
Even some defense lawyers told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution they were irritated at the new loopholes they knew they could take advantage of. Chief among them: Texting may be banned, but how does a police officer prove the driver was texting, as opposed to trying to find a phone number?
McDonough says HB 673 is a step in the right direction. If one of his troopers sees someone holding a phone or messing with a mounted one suspiciously long, that person gets pulled over.
HB 673 would require motorists to use hands-free technology if they talk or text on their phones. It also would prohibit drivers from watching movies or otherwise fiddling with their gadgets.
Georgia already prohibits anyone 18 or younger with a learner’s permit from using a wireless device while driving. And it bans anyone from texting while driving.
Safety experts say eyes on screens is a big reason Georgia traffic fatalities have risen by one-third in recent years — 1,550 people died on Peach State roads last year.
Some critics say the bill constitutes unnecessary government overreach. They say police can do a better job of enforcing the existing texting ban. Others say the law doesn’t go far enough — that some data show simply holding a conversation with someone outside the car takes a driver’s mind away from the road.
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