Earlier this month, the official ban on texting while driving, SB 52, was enacted in Florida. It’s about time, if you ask me and thousands of other drivers who are frustrated by that car swaying in and out of its lane because the person behind the wheel is too busy saying “LOL” to drive carefully.
Most people will likely be unaware of the new law, because, due to Governor Rick Scott’s veto, $1 million was cut from the law’s campaign budget.
I expected a barrage of public service announcements and billboards announcing SB 52, directed especially at Florida’s young drivers, who seem to be unable to drive down the street without sending at least one email or text. But unless you follow the news, which many young people don’t, you’ll unknowingly break the law every day.
The ban makes texting a secondary offense. This means that a police officer can only pull a driver over for another violation, such as speeding or a broken taillight, and if the driver happens to be texting, a $30 fine is added onto their ticket. The second time a driver happens to be texting when they are pulled over, the fine is increased to $60. Also, the measure provides exemptions for the use of GPS devices and talk-to-text technology. It also allows texting while a vehicle is stopped at red lights and stop signs and reporting criminal behavior.
This doesn’t sound like much of a law to me. First of all, $30 is the equivalent of a college student’s Friday night dinner and movie outing. Losing out on a single night of fun isn’t a big enough price to pay for breaking the law. A 2012 survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that in fatal crashes involving cell phones, 21 percent of drivers were ages 15 to 19. This same age group sends, on average, 100 text messages per day. I’m certain a tiny fee won’t serve as much of a deterrent for texting addicts. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, texting while driving kills 11 teens each day. A saddening number of young people die everyday, simply because they couldn’t wait a few minutes to send a message.
The fact that texting is a mere secondary offense also detracts from the law’s power. By the time an officer pulls people over for speeding, for example, they have time to stash their phone in their pocket and put on an innocent face. Officers are not permitted to look through a citizen’s phone to find a timestamp that would prove they were texting as they sped down the street. So someone could pull away from the scene with a ticket for speeding and then text his or her bestie about the whole thing before they even reach the next traffic light.
If texting was listed as primary offense, officers could issue direct violations for the act, which would scare many people into keeping both hands on the wheel. Texting while driving is a crime worse than speeding, reckless driving and obstructing traffic, because it often leads to those things. It’s essential that further legislation is enacted to either increase the fee for offenders or, like in 10 US states, make it an illegal behavior.
As it stands, the law seems like Tallahassee’s attempt to appease all those petition-signers and letter-writers who have lost a loved one in a texting-while-driving incident.
But, in reality, more lives with be lost and more people will grow accustomed to the practice of using their phones as they navigate the already dangerous roads, and that’s nothing to “LOL” at.
