Jeff Knight – Missouri House of Representatives Newsroom

Enhanced distracted driving law sends message: don’t text while driving

Missouri’s newly-enhanced distracted driving law takes effect on Monday, and House members say it’s a message to drivers in the state: put your phones down.

*Representative Jeff Knight (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

After years of the General Assembly considering and rejecting bans on texting while driving, the legislature this year agreed to a ban that covers holding a phone; the typing or sending of text-based messages; video calls or broadcasting or otherwise recording and sharing videos; and watching videos or movies. The language was part of Senate Bill 398, signed into law last month.

It’s called the “Siddens Bening Hands Free Law,” named for two Missourians who died in separate distracted driving incidents.

Representative Jeff Knight (R-Lebanon) handled that proposal in the House. He knew the history of the texting while driving issue was one of a long time lack of consensus. This was based, in part, on conservative lawmakers’ desire not to infringe on individual liberties. So, Knight had concerns when it was amended to another bill he was carrying and wanted to get passed. After talking to some of the opponents of the issue and others with a stake, he decided to let it stand.

He said as technology has evolved, any need to let people keep holding their phones has diminished.

“I have my first vehicle that I can answer the phone by touching a button on my steering wheel and I never thought that was a big deal, and it’s a big deal. I like it. I think the more the technology in these vehicles advances, and the technology of the actual cell phones, I think in the near future you won’t see a need for people to pick their phones up while they’re driving,” said Knight.

Representative Lane Roberts (R-Joplin) has an extensive background in law enforcement, including as a former Joplin Police Chief and Director of the Department of Public Safety. He agreed that this year’s proposal included the right provisions at the right time.

“Finding that balance between individual liberty for one person when it begins to encroach on the safety or the liberty of another is not a bright line. It’s always a challenge to find the balance, and I think that’s what this bill does,” said Roberts. “It recognizes that we’ve grown to the point where the use of technology is so prevalent that misuse of it puts other people at risk, and then given the fact that there is the availability, so many alternatives for hands-free use of technology, it’s just time to think about how we go about limiting that.”

Also on the language’s list of bipartisan backers is Representative Steve Butz (D-St. Louis), whose background is in the insurance industry. He said distracted driving has long been a concern for that industry.

*Representative Steve Butz (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

“It’s exceptionally bad in Missouri, and part of that problem is … inattentive driving due to texting, Facebooking, emailing, everything else on your phone while you’re driving, so the more we can hammer, ‘Put the stupid phone down while you’re driving,’ which we’ve been saying for a while but it’s got to have some teeth,” said Butz.

Knight and Roberts, like others in their caucus, said they still hold personal liberties as important, but said those concerns were tempered by the fact that the bill makes phone use a secondary offense. That means a traffic stop can’t be triggered just by phone use. A person has to be stopped for something else before they can be cited.

Knight adds, “The only time they could come after your phone records was [in cases of] severe bodily injury or death, which you can kind of already do. I thought the bill was more of a stronger message to the public that we don’t want [people to be texting while driving] than, probably, the enforceability of it.”

Butz agrees that the most important thing this bill does is send a message that legislators, on behalf of Missouri citizens, are telling drivers that they shouldn’t be on their phones and behind the wheel at the same time.

“Anything that just brings to the regular citizen’s mind – mine, yours, and everybody else in between – just like there was a time when very few of us wore seat belts, now almost everybody wears a seat belt. There was a time when you didn’t put little kids in car seats, now everybody puts their little kids in car seats, texting, to me, is in that thing,” said Butz.

“At this point I don’t believe anybody believes that texting while you’re operating a vehicle, regardless of who you are or where you are, could possibly be considered safe,” said Roberts. “The important thing is that the law now acknowledges that [texting while driving] is problematic. There are now some parameters in place to exercise some level of control and hopefully it will lead to some prudence in the development of technology and people’s decision making. It’s like seatbelts. [The state’s seatbelt law creates a secondary offense] but the fact that you’re required to wear it, the fact that it gets a lot of attention, has most definitely increased the use of seatbelts, so this is very similar.”

*Representative Lane Roberts (Photo: Missouri House Communications)*

As was the case with the seatbelt law when it passed, Roberts and his colleagues expect it will take some time to see wholesale change in drivers’ habits now that the updated distracted driving law has been passed.

The tougher law regarding phone use was long sought by road safety advocates, who are pleased with the passage. The Missouri Department of Transportation says in the ten years up to 2021 there were nearly 200,000 distracted driving related crashes in Missouri, which caused no fewer than 801 deaths. Some agencies think the real totals are far greater.

“States that have texting bans, phone use bans, hands free bans, they do have a reduction in serious auto accidents … to me it was a no brainer,” said Butz.

Michael Bening of Raymore was 46 and trying to clear debris from a highway when he was hit and killed by a driver believed to have been distracted, on Interstate 49 in Cass County in May, 2021. Randall Siddens was picking up traffic cones after a race in Columbia in May, 2019, when a woman who was driving while voice chatting swerved around a vehicle stopped at a red light and hit him.

The bill including the law bearing their names was passed out of the House 97-40. While the law takes effect on Monday, its penalty provisions won’t be enacted until January 1, 2025, to allow for a grace period while the public is educated on the new law.

New law will affect school start dates beginning next year

Some schools will be starting classes later under a bill signed into law last month by Governor Mike Parson (R).

Representative Jeff Knight (photo by Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Missouri law has allowed school districts to begin classes up to ten days before the first Monday in September, but an earlier start date could be set if a district’s board approves it in a public meeting. A provision in House Bill 604 repeals that provision, and allows districts to set start dates no earlier than 14 days before the first Monday in September.

The provision was proposed by Lebanon Republican Jeff Knight, who said earlier start dates hurt two of the state’s top industries: tourism and agriculture.

“The tourism dollars that are lost in August because these schools start earlier and earlier and earlier was becoming significant,” said Knight. “There was some opposition from a lot of school groups talking about local control, but at the same time, we need those revenues to help fund schools.”

Knight said at least one study found a 30-percent decrease in July and August lodging tax collections at the Lake of the Ozarks over the last decade. He compared that to changes in school start dates and saw that in that time, many districts that had been starting after Labor Day ten years ago were now starting around the second week of August.

“Big Surf water park testified during the committee that they actually closed the Big Surf water park last year August 13. It wasn’t because people quit coming to Big Surf, it was more that all of their workers and employees were going back to school,” said Knight.

Knight said agriculture is also affected as students who would be working on farms are pulled away for classes during potential harvest periods.

“There are still people in our area, with the drought earlier last year and the rain situation of early this year, there’s still people cutting hay right now,” said Knight.

Knight said what can’t be measured in dollar amounts or percentages are the family vacations that might be altered by earlier start dates, and the memories and experiences families could be having together by being allowed more time in the summer months. He said for many families, taking vacation in the spring simply isn’t as appealing.

“[School districts who opposed the change] would argue that we get out in the middle of May and you can make up for tourism in that, and my response was, ‘Have you ever jumped in the lakes or the rivers in the middle of May?’ They’re extremely cold … where in August, it’s still extremely hot.”

Knight, who is a former educator, said extending the start date cutoff from 10 to 14 days means districts can still start reasonably early.

“Ten days before the first Monday is a Friday. Well, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to start school on a Friday. 14 days means you can start on a Monday, but you still gain, in some years, an extra weekend, and in some years, depending on how the holiday falls, two weekends,” said Knight.

The provision of HB 604 regarding schools’ start date doesn’t affect districts until the start of the 2020-21 school year.

Fees at license offices will increase keeping offices open, under House bill signed into law

What Missourians are charged at the state’s 174 licenses offices will be increasing for the first time in 20 years, under legislation signed into law this week by Governor Mike Parson (R).

The language, found in House Bill 499, would increase the fees those offices can charge for services like licensing vehicles, issuing driver’s licenses, and transferring vehicle titles. Those fees are the only source of income private entities get for running those offices, and they haven’t been increased in 20 years.

Lawmakers learned that those offices’ expenses have continued to climb as the state provided less and less of the material they needed in order to operate, such as office supplies.

“Used to [be], the state would send their paper and their computers and all, but these license offices are paying for everything now on a $2.50 or $3.50 fee,” said Representative Jeff Knight (R-Lebanon), who proposed the fee hikes. “I think my easiest argument was in 1999 you could buy a fully-loaded pickup for $23,000. Now you go to a lot and that same pickup costs $80,000.”

Knight said these offices’ margins will only become narrower as the state’s minimum wage is about to increase and as the issuance of Real ID ramps up this year. He learned that because of these factors, many of the entities who run those offices were planning not to bid to have them for another term.

He believes it’s important to keep those offices open, particularly in rural areas and for the benefit of older Missourians, who are less likely to conduct business online.

“If you live in a rural area, do you want your grandfather or your grandmother to have to drive another 30, 45 minutes or even an hour? An average of $3 increase would not cover the gas it would take to drive to the next open license office, if these start closing down,” said Knight.

Lawmakers had discussed building into the bill automatic fee increases tied to inflation and other economic factors, but the language that has become law includes no such mechanism. Knight said as more Missourians switch to doing their licensing business online, the need for fee offices could diminish in the coming years, so that provision was not explored.

“No one really knows what the life expectancy of these license offices are going to be, but the more and more of it that goes to online … ten years from now there could be a discussion of whether we need these license offices,” said Knight. “We had a bill this year dealing with kiosks and digital driver’s licenses, so with the wave of the future the way it is I think this will take care of them until some of those things get put in place.”

The legislation would go into effect August 28. Knight said the operators he’s talked to said they would go ahead and re-bid to keep running their offices as long as the language became law, and that if it was in effect by then it would be soon enough for them.

Knight said the issue was more personal for him because the offices in Greene and Christian Counties are run by the non-for-profit Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks.

“I’ve had a couple of tragic instances with cancer in my family, so I kind of took it on as kind of a personal note … that organization was fantastic to my family whenever I had sisters going through this,” said Knight.

HB 499 also requires the revocation of the license of a driver who’s negligence contributed to his or her vehicle striking a highway worker in a work zone.

House members told some license offices could soon close; proposal would increase their fees

People that run some of the state’s license bureaus say those will close if the fees for the services they provide aren’t increased. That could create hardships for Missourians, especially in rural areas.

Those 174 offices are operated by private entities through contracts with the state and employ roughly 1,700 Missourians. The fees those offices charge for services like licensing vehicles, issuing licenses, and transferring vehicle titles, have not been increased since 1999.

Operators said with the state’s minimum wage about to increase; the surge in expenses they will incur as Real IDs roll out this year; and steady increases in the expenses those offices must cover for themselves, many of them don’t plan to bid to continue operating.

Lebanon Republican Jeff Knight has filed House Bill 584, which would increase the fees those offices can charge for services. Those fees are the offices’ only source of revenue for the state services they provide.

Supporters of his bill presented the House Committee on General Laws with a list of 46 items they say the Department used to supply that license offices now must pay for – things ranging from pens and pamphlets that offices must now print themselves to fax machines and $5000 video surveillance equipment.

“In just one instance, a Gladstone office uses 10 cases of paper per week at $30 per case. The state requires that they use a specific Lexmark laser printer with the cost of $1,000 a month in toner,” said Knight.

Crystal Webster is the Director of the Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks. The Foundation took up operating several license offices in southwest Missouri as a way to supplement its mission of offering services to those with financial needs while fighting breast cancer. Their contract is up this year and she said they don’t plan to rebid.

“Without something done immediately, as in this year, Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks cannot afford to rebid [the Nixa] license office. We just can’t afford it,” said Webster. “We got in this to subsidize our mission, right? And so now we would be subsidizing the constituents of Missouri as they come into tag and renew their vehicles and do their driver’s license transactions.”

Backers of HB 584 told the committee if rural offices close, that will create long trips for many Missourians who will have to drive to the next closest office to conduct their business. Knight said many older Missourians will make those long drives because they can’t or won’t conduct their business online.

Tom Raffety and his wife operate the license office in Charleston.

“When I used to live in Charleston the round trip from my house to the office was 2.2 miles. When this office closes the round trip from my house to the other office will be 34 miles,” said Raffety.

Virginia Moore with the Brookfield license office said residents in her community would have to drive 25 miles to get to another office if hers closes.

“I f we are not able to get this House bill passed, we will not rebid. Our bid is due in October and we’re done, and I don’t know that anybody would be able to provide that service in Brookfield,” said Moore.

Knight’s proposal, House Bill 584, would increase the fee on vehicle licenses from $3.50 to $6.00 and on biennial renewals from $7 to $12; would increase the fee on a title transfer from $2.50 to $6; on operators’ licenses from $2.50 to $6; and on notices of lien processing from $2.50 to $6.

Knight said he’s proposing significant hikes in fees because it’s been so long since they’ve been increased.

“To put it in perspective in 1999 a loaded-up Dodge pickup cost $23,000. The same vehicle today? Over $60,000,” said Knight.

Lawmakers discussed with Knight the possibility of adding to his bill a cost of living increase for those fees, so that they would periodically be adjusted automatically and future legislatures wouldn’t be faced with the same issue years from now.

The proposal has been approved by one House committee and awaits a hearing in a second.