A distracted driving bill in South Dakota’s Statehouse looks drastically different now than when Wednesday began. Members of the state’s House Judiciary committee overhauled a measure to limit cell phone use while on the road. The new legislation includes a public awareness campaign.
What began as a move to restrict local government regulation on distracted driving is now 20-14’s version of a texting while driving ban. Lawmakers hoghoused – or completely changed – House Bill 1177.
The new version makes texting while driving a secondary offense statewide. Like the state’s seatbelt law, drivers can be cited for texting if law enforcement pulls them over for another offense such as speeding or running a red light. The new language includes clarification that law enforcement can’t seize a driver’s cell phone.
Representative Brian Gosch says the measure establishes one law to trump varying local regulations on texting while driving.
"In Huron and Brookings, in Mitchell, in Sioux Falls, in Pennington County, in Aberdeen and other places I may have left out - I’ve got copies of those local ordinances, and they’re all different," Gosch says. "They all read differently, and, as you travel around South Dakota, you expect the rules of the road to be the same."
Gosch says a statewide texting ban can’t make it through the legislature because lawmakers hear anecdotes; they don’t have solid evidence that the move decreases distracted driving crashes. That’s why the bill also incorporates an awareness campaign from the Department of Public Safety. Gosch says he wants South Dakota to be the first state to successfully pass a ban and prove the shift saves lives.
Rapid City Police Chief Steve Allender is against the new proposal. He says crash statistics are not the tests legislators should use to project a cultural change. Allender says this version of House Bill 1177 waters down city regulations.
"It’s unacceptable and perhaps unconscionable to wait until motoring citizens run over each other before law enforcement is able to try to correct that behavior retroactively. Texting and driving needs to be a primary offense," Allender says. "It doesn’t even matter if it’s a petty offense; it needs to be primary, and local governments deserve the right to govern their own jurisdictions as they see fit."
Allender says he and lawmakers have a common goal of public safety, but he says the bill provides the lowest standard possible and, for him, that’s not good enough.
Because the text in the bill is brand new, lawmakers on the committee are waiting to continue discussion until next week.