Published: October 20, 2009 11:34 am      

Texting and driving

The House Public Safety Committee met to investigate the potentially dangerous practice of texting while driving. For drivers, text messaging is an unsafe activity. We hope that lawmakers finally will get the message to do something soon after the session begins in February.

Toward that goal, state Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, who serves on the legislative panel, plans to reintroduce legislation to ban text-messaging while driving.

Lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — should unite to support this public safety legislation, no more of a partisan issue than passing legislation banning driving while intoxicated, which was done decades ago.

The practice of texting while driving is as dangerous as driving while intoxicated, or even more dangerous. At least 18 states and the District of Columbia have passed bans and Oklahoma should proudly and wisely become the 19th.

Recently, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety launched a campaign to pass laws in all 50 states banning text messaging while driving.

A law prohibiting texting or sending e-mail while driving went into effect in Arkansas last week. AAA Oklahoma spokesman Chuck Mai was among those testifying before the legislative panel. Mai has pledged to work toward passing an anti-texting law in Oklahoma next year.

With the uptick of interest in this issue Tibbs may finally get the respect for her bill that is deserved.

That measure she filed last session failed to even get a hearing on the House floor. Tibbs also will introduce a measure to ban talking on a cell phone while driving unless the driver is using a handsfree device. She said the proposed measure would impose steep fines. That promises to be a dicier issue.

It little matters the cause of distraction for drivers — talking on the cell phone, texting on a cell phone, spending too long at the bar before getting behind the wheel, applying makeup or fiddling with the radio.

Distracted driving, all of it, is dangerous driving.

— The Tulsa World