Proposed restrictions on cell phone use while driving were on “life support” in the Maryland Senate Thursday after opponents succeeded in watering down the measure to apply only to text messaging.
But supporters were able to revive the bill by scheduling another vote on that amendment on Tuesday.
The bill by Sen. Mike Lenett, a Montgomery County Democrat, would ban almost all use of a mobile phone unless the driver employed a handless device such as a headset.
Use of a hand-held phone would be a secondary driving offense punishable by a $50 fine for the first offense and for the second, $100 plus one point.
Those penalties were cut in half from Lenett?s original proposal, but this is the first time any bill restricting cell phone use has made it to the floor of either house despite years of trying.
“We have tried in this bill to take care of most of the objections of the past,” said Sen. Norman Stone, D-Baltimore County.
“The most egregious problem is text messaging,” said Sen. George Della, a Baltimore City Democrat, although he admitted, “I don?t know how to work the darn things.”
He complained about seeing Baltimore police officers driving with “a cell phone stuck in his ear and they?re not really paying attention to what?s going on.”
But police and emergency workers would be exempted from the law while on duty, as would bus and van drivers using two-way radios.
Della?s amendment making the bill apply only to text messaging passed narrowly, but Lenett said he believed that the senators didn?t understand that his bill also banned text messaging, as well as the other hand-held uses.
Lenett said that the bill as amended would fail in the House, which had already killed a text-messaging bill in committee. The problem was enforcement, he said, since it would be hard for police to distinguish text messaging from dialing or talking on the phone.
Sen. Rona Kramer, a Montgomery County Democrat, said a recent scientific study showed it was the conversation itself that was most distracting, not just the use of the phone. All kinds of other distractions affect driving, Kramer said. “If we?re going to ban anything, let?s ban picking your nose while driving.”
