HARRISBURG (TNS) — Pennsylvania lawmakers once again must decide whether to take the cellphones out of drivers’ hands.
A bill to do just that could see action in Harrisburg soon. Conceived by Monroe County Rep. Rosemary Brown, it would ban the use of handheld devices by drivers and make violations a “primary offense” — meaning police could make a traffic stop based on seeing the violation.
“The purpose of this legislation is not to penalize drivers,” said Brown, a Republican, “but to protect innocent drivers, similar to our driving under the influence laws.”
Statistics paint a grim picture of the toll from distracted driving. According to PennDOT, there were 13,776 distracted driving crashes in 2019, with 62 fatalities.
Brown said the numbers are significantly underreported.
“That is just the bare, bare minimum of what is actually out there,” she said.
Her bill would fine drivers $100 for holding or supporting — for instance, propping between the shoulder and ear — a cellphone or similar device.
HEADWINDS TO PASSAGE
Every state that borders Pennsylvania — Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia — already has approved a handheld device ban for drivers.
Brown has been pushing for a Pennsylvania version for six years, and believes the House might take up her latest bill in May.
One issue it faces is concern about disproportionate numbers of traffic stops of Black drivers.
“I have concerns around racial profiling,” said Rep. Donna Bullock, a Philadelphia Democrat and chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus. “We have to look at how these stops are impacting people of color.”
Beyond that, when Brown pushed a similar bill last session, some lawmakers said it went too far.
Republican Rep. Doyle Heffley of Carbon County introduced an amendment to make the device-holding offense secondary, meaning police could not pull the driver over simply for holding such a device.
The amendment did the same with texting while driving, currently a primary offense. His amendment was approved. In Brown’s opinion, it took the punch out of the bill, which ended up getting approved by the House but stalling in the Senate.
Brown said she wants to convince lawmakers the proposed offense must be a primary violation. And, she said, she wants to see if all police departments would be able to collect data on traffic stops, including the race and ethnicity of the drivers who are stopped.
PRETEXTUAL TRAFFIC STOPS
Bullock said giving police another reason to pull over Black motorists is a concern.
If the handheld-device offense is primary, Bullock said, it would create another cause for police to carry out “pretextual” traffic stops. Other offenses that allow such stops include expired registrations and broken taillights.
Bullock said there is concern those stops produce disproportionately negative outcomes for Black people.
Currently, there is no statewide data on race, ethnicity, age, or gender of drivers pulled over for traffic violations. Bullock and Brown have discussed a possible amendment to the bill that would mandate collection by police of that data.
The data challenge is huge. Pennsylvania State Police alone made more than 475,000 traffic stops in the pandemic year of 2020, and about 639,000 in 2019, according to Cpl. Brent Miller.
Without a mandate to do so, state police on Jan. 1 began collecting more than 30 different data points on every traffic stop, Miller said. It is to be analyzed by University of Cincinnati researchers to identify potential patterns of racial or ethnic disparities.
Col. Robert Evanchick, state police commissioner, said the researchers might make “make recommendations on changes to PSP policy or training.”
Brown said her main goal is to create the primary offense, but collecting demographic data on traffic stops is important, too. One challenge will be figuring out how how local police can collect the data and where they can send it.
Bullock said Massachusetts passed a data-collection law. Early results showed Black drivers got citations, rather than warnings, in disproportionate numbers compared to white drivers, according to Bullock.
DANGERS ARE OBVIOUS
On the streets of Allentown, opinions go both ways, but many favor the proposal.
“It’s dangerous. It’s a safety issue,” said Elvis Flores, a machine operator who lives in the city. “If you have the cellphone stuck to the dash and you are dialing, that’s something else.”
But Jowell Reyes, an Allentown barber, was concerned police would abuse the potential new reason to pull drivers over.
“I don’t think I’m for it,” Reyes said.
Ron Lacey, a mental health industry worker, said the law should have been passed in Pennsylvania a long time ago.
“Especially when the fatalities started piling up,” Lacey said. “It’s common sense.”
LOTS OF SUPPORT
The list of organizations that support the bill is long and wide-ranging and includes the Pennsylvania School Bus Association, the Ambulance Association of Pennsylvaniaand the National Safety Council.
“Anything we can do to help the public not be distracted as they drive is a good thing,” said Miller of the Pennsylvania State Police, which favors the bill.
Theresa Podguski, director of legislative affairs for AAA East Central, said research backs up the organization’s support of the bill.
It found crashes involving teenage drivers and found distracted driving was a factor 58% of the time. Beyond that, Podguski said, research shows the visual, cognitive and physical distractions of an electronic device “makes it an inherently dangerous activity” while driving.
The National Motorists Association is on the other side of the fence.
President Gary Biller said the 8,000-member organization recognizes the dangers of distracted driving, but believes that when it comes to talking on the cell behind the wheel “there are people who can manage those types of conversations safely.”
(Ford Turner is The Morning Call’s Capitol correspondent.)
