phone ban may pass this session

After coming closer than ever last year, state legislators are once again trying to ban the use of hand-held cell phones and text messaging while driving in Maryland.

Armed with statistics and with emotional pleas, senators testified before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in Annapolis yesterday that the time is long overdue for Maryland to join the ranks of states with strict cell phone laws.

"It makes good common sense and is a very important public-safety measure," said Sen. Mike Lenett, D-Montgomery, one of the sponsors of legislation to ban the use of a hand-held phone while driving.

The Senate actually passed a version of Lenett's bill last year amid much hand-wringing over whether a ban would discourage the use of phones during emergencies and overly burden rural residents with longer commutes.

Ultimately, however, the House Environmental Matters Committee killed the legislation.

Proponents of the measure have not been deterred by past failures. They point to findings such as a Harvard Center of Risk Analysis study that says cell phone use while driving accounts for 6 percent of crashes every year, including 2,600 deaths.

With the proliferation of text-messaging, legislators also are targeting that activity in case a full hand-held ban fails.

"It is tough enough to do (text-messaging) looking at (the phone)," said Sen. Norman Stone, D-Baltimore County, a sponsor of a text ban. "It really is much more distracting."

Russell Hurd of Harford County told the committee how his daughter, Heather, was killed in Orlando when the driver of a tractor-trailer was busy text messaging and failed to stop the vehicle.

"It is time for the state of Maryland to ban these dangerous practices forever," he said. "Because of texting-while-driving, I will never hear my daughter's voice or her little giggle ever again."

But these bills typically become subject to the type of technical quibbling that scuttles many proposals in the General Assembly: why aren't the penalties more severe; who should be exempted; are cell phones any worse than eating or changing the radio station while driving; and how can it properly be enforced?

Sen. Bryan Simonaire, R-Pasadena, said many studies show hands-free cell phones, which would be allowed under Lenett's proposal, are just as distracting as hand-held phones.

Lenett responded that hand-held phones have an extra physical limitation.

"I think it is a reasonable dividing line," he said.

States from California and Washington to New Jersey and Connecticut ban the use of hand-held phones while driving, according to the state Department of Legislative Services.

"This falls in with any of the other important driving laws we have," Lenett said.