State Sen. Wayne Wallingford pushes to ban drivers from texting

With cellphone-related crashes on the rise, a Cape Girardeau lawmaker wants to ban motorists from texting while driving in Missouri.

State Sen. Wayne Wallingford, R-Cape Girardeau, calls it a safety issue, citing data on traffic crashes.

He has introduced legislation to impose such a ban and is optimistic it will pass when lawmakers get back to work after this week’s spring break.

The bill was heard earlier this session by the Senate transportation committee.

“No one testified against it,” he said.

Representatives from the transportation, insurance and medical fields testified in support of the bill. Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) backs the bill, Wallingford said.

Missouri has seen the number of cellphone-related traffic crashes increase by 35 percent since 2014, according to MoDOT.

Cellphone use is “one of the fastest-growing causes of fatal crashes in Missouri, and like most other contributing factors, it’s completely preventable,” The Associated Press quoted Jon Nelson, a highway safety assistant for the Missouri Department of Transportation, as saying.

“When it comes to cellphones, nobody wants to be on the road with a driver constantly using their phone, but so many people find it acceptable to do themselves,” Nelson said. “We can do better.”

Under Wallingford’s bill, all motorists who text and drive could face a $50 fine, which would be doubled for those caught texting and driving in a school or work zone.

Current Missouri law only prohibits drivers younger than 21 from texting and driving as well as all commercial, motor vehicle drivers.

But Wallingford said texting and driving is unsafe at any age.

Missouri is one of only three states that doesn’t ban texting for all drivers. The other two states are Arizona and Montana. Arizona lawmakers have proposed a similar ban to that proposed by Wallingford.

Sixteen states have banned hand-held phone use by all drivers, The Associated Press reported, citing information from the National Council of State Legislatures.

Wallingford believes banning such texting in Missouri would save lives.

“Some people see it as taking away a little bit of your freedom,” the Republican lawmaker said. But he sees it differently.

“You can’t buy a car without an air bag,” he said. Banning motorists from texting “is in the interest of safety and protecting lives,” Wallingford said.

The Cape Girardeau lawmaker said a Harvard University study reported texting while driving contributes to 330,000 injury accidents and 2,300 deaths a year nationwide.

Americans send 75 billion texts a month, he said. All of those aren’t while driving, but if just 10 percent of the texts are sent while motorists are driving, that amounts to a staggering 7.5 billion texts a month, Wallingford said.

Cape Girardeau police chief Wes Blair said he supports the proposed texting ban.

If it becomes law, Blair said his officers would enforce it just like other traffic laws. But he said a law alone won’t eliminate distracted driving.

Lawmakers have introduced similar bills in previous legislative sessions, but none of them have passed.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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