Some facts about SB 6345

Chief of the Federal Way Police Department, was checking his e-mail with his cell phone while behind the wheel of a police cruiser when he rear-ended the motorist in front of him.
Imagine his embarrassment. No injuries. No damage, but a lesson for all of us.


Chief Wilson called Sen. Tracy Eide, D-Federal Way, a long-time champion of legislation to ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving. The chief confessed his mistake and promised to come to Olympia to testify in support of Eide’s legislation — Senate Bill 6345.


With the support of Wilson, State Patrol Chief John Batiste and a slew of other people, the Legislature has passed Eide’s bill to ban texting while driving and ban the use of hand-held cell phones by drivers. The bill goes one step further and says drivers under the age of 18 may not use a cell phone at all — even a hands-free device.


Gov. Chris Gregoire signed SB 6345 into law on Friday. Law enforcement officers should start writing tickets June 11. Under the bill, police could immediately pull over someone for texting or talking without a headset and give them a $124 ticket.


A ticket will not become part of a driver’s record and dialing a phone is not considered text messaging. The measure exempts emergency vehicle personnel, as well as anyone who is text messaging or calling and not using a headset to report illegal activity or summon emergency help.


People who are using a hearing aid or operating a tow truck also are exempt.


Passage of the cell phone bill has been a long-standing goal of Eide who introduced her first cell phone bill in 2000. It took until 2007 to get a bill through the Legislature.


That made use of a hand-held cellular phone while driving a secondary offense. In other words, a police officer had to observe a driver breaking another traffic law before the officer could cite the driver for breaking the cell phone law.


Washington was the only state in the union to make its cell-phone ban a secondary offense. As a result, you see people everywhere driving while holding a phone to their ear.


Now, with the new legislation making texting or use of a hand-held phone a primary offense. “Patience is a virtue, but I was close to running out of patience,” Eide admits.


Her bill passed the House on a vote of 60-37 and the Senate 33-15.


“The time has finally come,” Eide said. “People finally recognize it’s a safety issue, and people finally recognize that lives will be saved.”


Eide said a driver traveling on the freeway at 60 miles per hour who glances down at a text message for five seconds will travel one and a half football fields without looking at the road. “People know when they pick up a phone and they’re going 60 miles an hour on the freeway, it’s not a good idea,” Eide said. “Banning this practice is simply common sense.”


Eide is right.


Those who testified in the House and Senate hearings, made some excellent points:


• Driving while using a cell phone is as dangerous as driving while intoxicated.


• Distracted drivers miss up to 50 percent of their visual cues.


• Drivers who text have a 23 percent higher risk of being involved in an accident.


• Bicyclists are at risk of being hit by drivers who are not paying attention to the road.


• There are many examples of people who have lost loved ones because of distracted drivers on cell phones and many more of near misses.


• Seventy-six percent of drivers in Washington support a ban on texting and cell phone use while driving.


• Distracted driving needs to be made as socially unacceptable as drunken driving is today.


Eide said that it took her three years to convince her legislative colleagues to pass the graduated driver license law that requires teens to get more driving experience before they can have unrestricted driving privileges.


In the first year the graduated license law was in place, teen traffic fatalities were down 48 percent, Eide said.


Now that the governor has signed SB 6345 into law, let’s hope banning texting and hand-held cell phones while driving will have a similar effect on public safety in the state of Washington.