A ban on hand-held cell-phone use while driving was tentatively approved by the Maryland Senate Tuesday, after it removed an amendment applying the proposed law only to text messaging.
Close votes on various amendments indicate there still may be difficulty winning final passage for the kind of measure that in past years has never made it out of committee in either house.
Mobile-phone use in cars “is not the No. 1 cause of accidents,” said Sen. Alex Mooney, R-Frederick, opposing the bill. “Don?t take away the cell phone from good, law-abiding people.”
“This is a safety issue,” said Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, aBaltimore City Democrat. “We have to, as a group of people, catch up to this technology. It is absolutely dangerous.”
The bill would make any kind of hand-held cell-phone use, including text messaging, a secondary traffic offense with penalties of $50 for the first conviction and $100 for the second. Police could only stop a car if the driver was to be charged with another violation. A judge could waive the fine if the driver showed they had acquired a headset or other hands-free device.
Last week, the Senate narrowly approved an amendment to make the violation only apply to text messaging. “People said they thought they were adding text messaging to the bill,” even though it was already banned in the bill, said Sen. Norman Stone, a Baltimore County Democrat who the floor leader for the measure.
But the amendment?s sponsor, Sen. George Della, D-Baltimore City, said, “I think we knew exactly what we were doing.”
Sen. Mike Lenett, the bill sponsor, said the amendment would kill the bill, because it was difficult to enforce by police. A text-messaging ban has already been killed in a House committee.
The Senate also rejected amendments to ban the use of mobile GPS (Global Positioning System) devices, a proposal that had not been reviewed in committee.
Rural senators complained that people would be pulling to the side of the road to use their phones, but Lenett noted that headsets and other devices are widely available and inexpensive.
“We keep taking incremental steps to make driving a criminal offense,” said Sen. E.J. Pipkin, R-Upper Shore, who failed in his attempt to exempt the Eastern Shore from the cell-phone ban.
