Mitch Perry
Motorists driving on some of Florida’s expressways and turnpikes have probably seen the message shown on the same electronic scoreboards that give AMBER alerts over the past year that say, “No texting while driving — it’s the law.”
Except it’s really not, which is something that Weston Democratic state Rep. Richard Stark wants to address with his newly proposed legislation. His bill (HB 47) would allow law enforcement officers to pull drivers over for distracted driving as a primary offense, not a secondary one, as is current Florida law.
“It’s nice for people to know that there’s a law, but the reality is that there’s no teeth in the law,” Stark told FloridaPolitics.com Thursday.
Since the advent of cellphones over the past two decades, Florida has notoriously been behind the curve in passing legislation to deal with this technology and how it affects public safety. When the Legislature passed its current law making it a secondary offense to read or send a text three years ago, it came only after 40 other states had previously done so. “Most of the people I speak to publicly recognize that this is an issue that needs to be taken care, but having public support for something and having legislative support for something are two different things,” Stark says about the possibilities of his proposal passing in the 2017 session.
The South Florida Democrat says that opposition comes from two places: There is a libertarian strained general opposition to having someone’s “freedom” to text in their car taken away from them, but there’s also been resistance from the Democratic Black Caucus, concerned that making texting while driving a primary offense could make it easier for law enforcement to pull drivers over without a valid reason.
“Distraction is a serious safety concern. Best estimates are that at least 3,000 people are killed each year due to driver distraction, yet the safety impact of distracted driving could be significantly worse given the likely underreporting of the problem,” says Karen Morgan, manager of public policy with AAA South, who supports Stark’s bill.
Morgan says that according to the 2015 AAA Foundation Traffic Safety Culture Index drivers believe texting and emailing while driving is a serious safety threat but counterintuitively admit to engaging in such behavior. More than 77 percent of drivers say it is a very serious threat to safety, and 80.6 percent say it is entirely unacceptable. However, more than a third (42.3 percent) report having read a text or email while driving in the past 30 days, and nearly a third (31.3 percent) typed one.
Stark says that without committee assignments being doled out yet, it’s too early to surmise completely what the odds of his bill are. But he says he won’t give up without a fight in trying to get such legislation passed.
