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.

Texting while driving ban for all drivers proposed for 2020 legislative session

The House of Representatives will consider extending Missouri’s ban on texting while driving to drivers of all ages in the legislative session that begins January 8.

Representative David Evans (photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Missouri law only bans texting while driving for those 21 and younger.  House Bill 1290 would extend that ban to all drivers.  It would also allow local jurisdictions to enact their own laws and ordinances on the use of hand-held electronic communications devices.

Representative David Evans (R-West Plains) filed HB 1290.  He said it simply doesn’t make sense to ban only younger drivers from texting while driving.

“Being one of the older people with grandchildren I can honestly say my grandkids learned to use computers and start texting and typing as young as 2 or 3 whereas I’m still struggling to do so, and it would distract me far more to text and drive than I’m sure it would most 16, 17, 18 year olds today,” said Evans.

Evans said he wanted to propose what would be the “least intrusive” expansion of the texting while driving law.  After reviewing past legislation on the matter he chose to offer the same language as 2019’s House Bill 896, filed by Representative Rory Rowland (D-Independence).

“It’s really a safety issue.  It’s important to me as a parent, it’s important to me as a grandfather.  As a former judge, you see so many of these cases these days of folks that are distracted by driving.  One of the most time-consuming and distracting things you can do is look away and type,” said Evans.  “It’s an activity we need to regulate in some fashion.  I’m not going overboard here but simply saying hey, that extreme activity of texting and driving is something you’ve got to be more careful about and [the bill would] save lives and save accidents.”

The Department of Transportation backs extending the texting while driving ban to all drivers.  Nicole Hood, State Highway Safety and Traffic Engineer, said that would make roads safer for drivers and MoDOT workers.  The Department reports that since 2014, cell phone-related crashes in Missouri have increased by 31-percent, reaching nearly 2,500 last year.

“We continue to have record numbers of traffic fatalities.  For the past three years Missouri alone has had over 900 people that have been killed in traffic crashes and every one of those deaths affects a family and a community,” said Hood.  “Distracted driving, it can be a leading cause of some of these crashes, and using those cell phones and texting can definitely be a contributing factor.”

Similar legislation has received little or no attention from the legislature in recent years.  Evans said he will talk to House leaders soon in hopes of getting this bill some traction.

“It will save lives and it will save accidents, so I think it’s a good thing and I think leadership will see that,” Evans said.

Violations of Missouri’s texting while driving ban result in two-point violations against a driver’s license.  Accumulation of points can result in a license being suspended or revoked.