Texting While Driving Ban In Trouble
TALLHASSEE (CBSMiami) – A proposed statewide ban on texting while driving may have been run off the road in the state legislature.
The House amended the Senate bill to ban texting on Tuesday. The change will allow police to use drivers' mobile phone records against them only when texting causes a crash resulting in death or personal injury.
As it stands, the bill must pass a vote in the House and then be kicked back over to the Senate for the upper chamber to approve the changes. All of that will have to be done by Friday when the legislature's session ends.
Sen. Nancy Detert has pushed for the bill for years. The Venice Republican says the House should have passed the bill as it was.
"No one spoke to me about it," she said, walking back to the Senate. "We made the bill as small as we possibly could to try to get it through the House. It's a very simple bill; it should have simply passed."
Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia already have texting-while-driving bans for all drivers.
Efforts to pass a ban stalled for at least four years in the face of House Republican opposition. Conservative members based their concerns on government intrusion into people's lives.
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