What Virginia’s Proposed Distracted Driving Law Could Mean For Drivers
March 01--RICHMOND -- Virginia may be on its way to completely rewriting its texting and driving law -- instead replacing it with an expanded distracted driving law.
The proposed law says any use of a cellphone that "substantially diverts the driver's attention from the operation of the motor vehicle is guilty of distracted driving."
Distracted driving would be a primary offense, which means officers wouldn't need any other reason to pull you over, and comes with up to a $500 fine. The bill mandates a minimum $250 fine if it's in a construction zone.
HB 181, which passed the House 50-47, is up for a vote in the Senate on Thursday. If it passes there, it would go to Gov. Ralph Northam's desk. Former police officer turned lawyer, Del. Chris Collins, a R-Frederick County, is sponsoring the bill.
So what would that mean for drivers?
It would make it far easier for police to fine drivers using their cellphones, and lawmakers and advocates hope that changes bad behavior.
"The current law is very difficult to enforce," Collins said in a committee earlier this week. "If you pull someone over and catch them on Facebook, that is not a crime.
"This tries to rectify that."
In the past six years, 1,380 Virginians have been killed in alcohol-related crashes and 949 in distracted driving-related incidents. Nearly a quarter of all fatal crashes in 2016 involved distracted driving, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which maintains the data.
Those against distracted driving -- including police and sheriff groups, AAA, insurance companies, bike advocates and Drive Smart Virginia -- are applauding the bill as a move in the right direction in a state that is traditionally reluctant to pass any traffic safety and cellphone laws. Still, the bill doesn't go as far as laws of neighboring states.
Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Washington are "hands free" states where you can get pulled over and fined simply for holding your phone at all.
Patty Kruszewski, whose daughter died because of a distracted driver, testified that she is embarrassed by Virginia's deficiency in the law compared with other states.
"I'm scared when I cross from Maryland or D.C. into Virginia," Kruszewski said. "It's like I'm driving from sanity to insanity.
"Car accidents are killing more than mass shootings and there is nothing random about distracted driving. We have great power to prevent violence on the road."
In 2009, before widespread smartphone use, Virginia made it a secondary offense to text or email while driving. In 2013, the state upgraded it to a primary offense. Using GPS or dialing a number for a call remained legal.
But advocates say the law has been slow to catch up with technology. It's still possible to scroll through Facebook or use FaceTime without technically breaking the law.
Janet Brooking, executive director of Drive Smart Virginia, said that while the proposed law is not as extreme as other states, it was the right bill for Virginia right now.
"This bill is a more comprehensive fix," Brooking said. "It doesn't care what you're doing on your phone -- if it's distracting you, you're breaking the law."
She said cellphone use is the most egregious abuse by a driver because it involves all three types of distraction: visual, where you take your eyes off the road; manual, because you are typing or using your hands to adjust something; and thinking, where your mind is on what's happening on the phone, not on the road.
She likened stronger distracted driving laws in this decade to drunken driving laws of the 1970s, which led to a decrease in fatalities.
"It became socially unacceptable," Brooking said. "I do think it will go far to change behavior. ... We are hoping that with a stronger law, we will see the very same societal change as we did for impaired driving."
The bill would do away with the GPS exemption, meaning you couldn't even punch in an address on Google Maps while driving. The bill only gives exemptions to emergency personnel and those "lawfully stopped or parked."
The term "substantially diverts" is the hang up for some, including Democrats who argue the law could be used as an easy probable cause to pull over African American drivers.
Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, said these laws aren't always evenly applied: "They aren't going to pull me over ... but they may pull others over ... how do we keep law enforcement accountable?"
Collins says that's not the intention of the bill, saying the use of "substantial" is found more than 500 times in the state code.
Some say the distraction could be prosecuted under a law that mandates drivers "pay full time and attention" to the road.
Brooking said in 20 or more years, driverless technology could make the law moot, but until then she said the state has to address the issue.
"We cant wait that long to address the bad behaviors," Brooking said. "Until then, we can still save lives."
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