Don’t hold your breath for texting law

It would make a lot of sense for the Florida Legislature to pass a texting while driving law in the next session.

Florida drivers, who know how dangerous texting while driving can be, know such a law is needed. Just don’t bet on it any time soon.

Florida is one of only four states where texting while driving is not a primary offense — a police officer has to have another reason to stop you. While the law is needed, it’s going to take some time. Just ask Nan Rich. The Broward County commissioner served 14 years in the Florida House and Senate, during which time she was one of the lawmakers trying to get a law passed making driving without a seat belt a primary offense.

“It was quite an ordeal,” Rich told us. “We had such opposition.”

The opposition lasted close to 20 years, before a seat belt law was passed in 2009. And the only reason it passed then, Rich said, was because the federal government said they wouldn’t provide highway dollars to the state without a seat belt law. The state stood to lose over $30 million.

“The impetus [for passing the law] was loss of money, not safety,” Rich said.

Just like with the seat belt battle, lawmakers have consistently refused to toughen the state law that makes texting while driving a secondary offense. An officer has to stop you for another reason in order to cite you for texting.

A few lawmakers aren’t giving up. State Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, plans to submit a bill soon making texting while driving a primary offense. Rep. Richard Stark, D-Weston, filed a texting while driving bill in 2014 that didn’t go far. He tried again in 2016, and told us he would continue to fight for such a law.

There is some opposition for such a law from black legislators who feel police may use it to pull over black drivers unfairly.

But there is also plenty from lawmakers using the same lame excuse that was used for years before we got a seat belt law — that such a law is government infringement on a driver’s independence. Sorry, but that argument doesn’t work. Your right to independence while you drive ends when you are putting others at risk. And if you text while driving, you are putting other drivers at risk in addition to yourself. Studies have shown that distracted driving is even more dangerous than drunken driving.

But Florida lawmakers remain way behind the times as far as texting goes, and there is little optimism things will change soon.

Stark is in the process of working on a bill that will address the profiling issue. Certain information will have to be recorded if an officer gives out a texting while driving ticket. There will be other protections in the bill.

“Everybody understands the safety issue ... everybody seems to get it,” Stark told us.

“But some members of the Republican leadership just won’t budget. They think it’s an invasion of your freedom to do whatever you want to when you get behind the wheel.”

Such excuses from lawmakers could make you think they don’t drive on Florida roads and see all the distracted drivers. Or maybe lawmakers just don’t care.

Lawmakers in other states have had to keep trying to get a texting while driving law passed, until finally the pressure from the public wins out.

Keep the pressure on your lawmakers. Tell them we need to make texting while driving a primary offense, in order to make our roads safer.

It took too many years to make seat belts mandatory in Florida. Lawmakers must come to their senses quicker than that concerning texting.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Elana Simms, Gary Stein, Andy Reid and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.