Don't text and drive

“Some peo­ple say it might be hard to enforce, but 85 per­cent of Ohioans are now wear­ing safety belts.”

— Rep. Rex Damschroder

“It is very dan­ger­ous, and peo­ple shouldn’t do it, young dri­vers par­tic­u­larly, but it’s one of those basic free­dom issues for me.”

— Rep. Lynn Wachtmann

It’s time to put the phone away. Ohio is set to join 38 other states where it is ille­gal to text while oper­at­ing a motor vehi­cle. On Tues­day of this week the Ohio House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed a ban on tex­ting by a vote of 82–12. The Sen­ate had pre­vi­ously passed the ban and it will soon go to Gov­er­nor Kasich who has indi­cated that he will sign the measure.

Under the pro­vi­sions of the law, it will be ille­gal in Ohio to drive a motor vehi­cle on any street or high­way “while using a hand­held elec­tronic wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion device to write, send or read a text-based com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” The bill will be effec­tive 90 days after it is signed by the gov­er­nor and con­tains a six month grace period in which only warn­ings can be given.

Sev­eral acts are exempted from the bill. Tex­ting in an emer­gency — to con­tact a doc­tor, hos­pi­tal or law enforce­ment is per­mit­ted. Law enforce­ment offi­cers and other emer­gency work­ers are also exempt if they have to use an elec­tronic device in the course of their duties. Exemp­tions also exist if you are using the device to enter a phone num­ber to make a tele­phone call and if you are stopped — though in the lat­ter case only if your vehi­cle is not in a lane of travel (being stopped at a red light is not good enough). Hands free devices and GPS nav­i­ga­tors are also exempt.

In gen­eral, the ban is not a “pri­mary offense.” That means that a law enforce­ment offi­cer could not pull you over solely on the basis of an obser­va­tion that you were tex­ting while dri­ving. How­ever, if an offi­cer stops you for another offense such as speed­ing, then a sec­ond, sep­a­rate offense could be filed for using the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions device.

A sep­a­rate sec­tion applies to dri­vers under the age of 18. That sec­tion pro­hibits all use of cel­lu­lar and wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices, not just tex­ting. It con­tains exemp­tions only for hands free devices, emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tion and use of the devices while the vehi­cle is stopped and off the road­way. More impor­tantly, the pro­vi­sion that applies to juve­nile dri­vers is a pri­mary offense that sub­jects them to being stopped and issued a citation.

For adult dri­vers, the offense is a minor mis­de­meanor and sub­ject to the same penal­ties that apply to other minor mis­de­meanor offenses such as speed­ing offenses, though it allows local munic­i­pal­i­ties to impose more seri­ous penal­ties under city and vil­lage ordi­nances. The juve­nile offense car­ries a manda­tory fine of $100.00 and a manda­tory license sus­pen­sion of 60 days. A sec­ond offense as a juve­nile would bring a $300 fine and a one year license sus­pen­sion. Juve­nile dri­ver edu­ca­tion courses will now also be required to include instruc­tion about the dan­gers of tex­ting and driving.

The more seri­ous penal­ties for juve­niles arise as the result of a long his­tory of seri­ous or fatal acci­dents involv­ing juve­niles and dis­tracted dri­ving. The House heard tes­ti­mony about a series of fatal acci­dents — a juve­nile who killed a motor­cy­clist while tex­ting; another who died while talk­ing to her mother on her cell phone. Just last week two Col­erain Town­ship juve­niles, one an exchange stu­dent from Den­mark, were killed when they failed to yield and slammed into a semi. The But­ler County Sheriff’s Office released records on Mon­day that showed that the dri­ver had sent a text mes­sage within sec­onds of the crash.

For the past nine years, Judge Spicer has been kind enough to allow me to pre­side over the juve­nile traf­fic court docket. Each week between 15 and 30 juve­niles come into court with a par­ent to answer to a traf­fic cita­tion rang­ing from speed­ing to run­ning stop signs to oper­at­ing a vehi­cle under the influ­ence of alco­hol. Each time a juve­nile is before the court because of an acci­dent, I inquire about what caused the acci­dent. Rarely does a week go by with­out a juve­nile, or mul­ti­ple juve­niles, admit­ting that they got into an acci­dent because they were look­ing at their phone, adjust­ing their radio or oth­er­wise dis­tracted in their vehicle.

For your safety and the safety of every­one around you, it’s time to put the phone away.

David Hej­manowski is a Mag­is­trate and Court Admin­is­tra­tor at the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer Assis­tant Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on May 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.