PHILADELPHIA — Police say a Philadelphia man is charged with murder after allegedly shooting a neighbor in a dispute over dog waste.WASHINGTON – Hey, you: The guy who left the office a little early on Friday to get a head start at the lake but needs to send quick e-mail to check on outstanding orders. The federal government would like you to pull over or hang up.
Same goes for the woman in the car in the next lane who’s texting her son to make sure he got home from practice.
The secretary of the Transportation Department is jawboning about the need for state laws to ban texting while driving.
Members of Congress have introduced legislation to withhold money for highway projects from states like Indiana that don’t forbid drivers from texting behind the wheel.
But so far, there’s been no federal action to force states to do what 30 have already done: ban texting while driving.
The Indiana House overwhelmingly approved a texting ban this year, but it was killed in the Senate because the gatekeeper of the legislation – the chairman of the Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters Committee – called it “silly.”
Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, said a ban is unenforceable unless police confiscate a driver’s phone to check for recent texts.
Nonetheless, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is campaigning to encourage states to enact texting bans and has said he will support either carrot or stick legislation. In addition to bills to dock states that don’t have texting-while-driving bans, some lawmakers endorse legislation to give grants to states that do.
Groups representing state highway agencies and carmakers either oppose federal sanctions or are neutral on them.
“On the one hand you’re giving states money to help the economy, but then you’re potentially taking that away,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, which supports incentives but not sanctions. “It really sets the wrong tone on this.”
A trade group of automakers has encouraged states to enact texting bans but hasn’t taken a position on whether Congress should force the issue with financial sanctions if they don’t.
Gloria Bergquist, vice president of communications for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said a good historical lesson is seat belts.
Federal law requires cars sold in the U.S. to have seat belts, but it’s up to the states to adopt legislation requiring their use.
Bergquist said automakers worked for years in state capitols to support laws that allow police to pull drivers over when people in a vehicle aren’t wearing safety belts. But she noted that part of the issue – requiring manufacturers to install seat belts and designing cars so there’s a noise if the seat belt isn’t used – doesn’t apply to cell phones and other devices because “we cannot design the ‘nomadic devices’ that are brought into the vehicles.”
The Transportation Department doesn’t have the power to withhold money from states that don’t enact texting bans unless Congress adopts legislation.
Bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress to reduce highway funding for states that don’t have laws to ban texting by drivers, but they have attracted only a handful of backers, none from Indiana.
Niki Kelly of The Journal Gazette contributed to this article.
