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AUSTIN CITY COUNCIL
Ban on texting while driving to be discussed Thursday
Drivers would have to give cyclists, others 3-foot buffer under proposal.
Driving while text messaging and driving within three feet of cyclists would be banned under a proposal the Austin City Council will consider Thursday, though police say the ideas might be tough to enforce.
Council Members Mike Martinez and Chris Riley and Mayor Lee Leffingwell are proposing to prohibit writing, sending and reading text messages, instant messages and e-mails, as well as viewing the Internet on a cell phone or other portable electronic device while driving a vehicle or bicycling.
They also want to require a three-foot distance between vehicles and "vulnerable road users," such as cyclists, pedestrians and people in wheelchairs. Either party — the driver or other road user — could be ticketed for failing to keep that distance, Martinez said.
The violations would likely be Class C misdemeanors, which carry a fine of up to $500 and can be appealed in Municipal Court. The changes aim to improve public safety and bring more public awareness to dangerous driving behaviors, Martinez said.
"We've lost sight of the responsibilities that come with operating on a roadway," he said. "In a city like Austin, which has some of the most congested roads in the country, the last thing we need to be doing is reading e-mails while driving."
City officials said the texting ban might be the first such citywide ban in Texas. If the council approves the policies at its Thursday meeting, city staffers would draft rules that the council would have to vote on before enactment. That process would take at least two months, Martinez said.
Martinez began floating the idea of a local texting ban last year but said he wanted to see how bills fared at the state Legislature first. More than a dozen bills addressing cell phone use while driving failed during this year's legislative session, he said. One that survived — prohibiting cell phone use in school zones — will take effect Sept. 1, but some cities are questioning whether they must enforce it. Austin plans to enforce it and install about 750 signs related to the school-zone ban — at an estimated cost of $80,000 — within a year, starting this fall.
Martinez said he's interested in enacting a ban on cell phone use while driving — an idea he suggested last year — but said the issue needs more debate. There is clearer data to show that texting while driving poses a danger, he said.
A report released last month by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and cited by Martinez found that when truck drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when they weren't texting. The study, financed with $300,000 from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, involved outfitting the cabs of long-haul trucks with video cameras over 18 months.
The Austin Police Department does not have statistics on wrecks that might have been caused by text messaging, said Donald Baker, commander of the highway enforcement division. He said the ban could be tough to enforce. Officers would either have to catch a driver texting or rely on driver and witness accounts if a wreck occurred, he said.
"If someone was texting and they had the phone down low and nobody saw them, how do you know they are in violation? Human nature is that the driver isn't going to admit it to the officer," Baker said.
Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said laws restricting cell phone use aren't always effective because drivers don't think they will be enforced. The institute conducted a study in New York state that found that drivers' handheld cell phone use dropped immediately after a ban took effect in 2001 and then returned to pre-ban levels a year later. "When the publicity died down, drivers seemed to go back to their old habits," he said.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia prohibit texting while driving, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents highway safety agencies nationwide. Spokesman Jonathan Adkins said texting bans pose enforcement problems because officers find it difficult to spot and confirm texting, especially at night, and have trouble proving it if tickets are appealed.
Debbie Russell of the Central Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said creating a public awareness campaign about the risks of texting would be more effective than outlawing it. The ban would single out one dangerous driving behavior, even though others — such as eating and applying makeup — can be just as distracting, she said.
Council Members Sheryl Cole and Laura Morrison said they plan to vote for the ban but are concerned that it might be difficult to enforce.
Martinez said he thinks that most drivers would comply and that having a law in place would make people more aware of the risks of texting. Leffingwell said it likely would take awhile for the public to get used to the ban, just as it took time for seat belt laws to gain public acceptance.
Baker said state law already requires a "safe driving distance" between vehicles and bicycles but does not specify how far apart they must be. The Austin proposal would require a three-foot distance, the central aim of a bill that Gov. Rick Perry vetoed this year.
Eighteen other states have laws requiring a minimum distance between vehicles and bicycles, said Robin Stallings of the Texas Bicycle Coalition. Other Texas cities are considering such a rule, but none has enacted one, he said.
Leffingwell said three feet would be a reasonable buffer to create a safer environment for the growing number of Austin cyclists.
Currently, about 1 percent of Austin's work force bikes to work. In June, the City Council passed a long-term plan aimed at finishing Austin's network of bike paths and making biking safer. There were 315 bike-vehicle crashes in Austin last year, one of them fatal, according to police.
"One of the reasons people don't bike is they think it's unsafe," said Lane Wimberley of the League of Bicycling Voters, a biking advocacy group in Austin. "This would put some teeth in the (existing) 'safe passing' law."
Baker said it could be difficult to enforce a three-foot rule in dense urban areas, such as downtown, which during rush hour is clogged with cars, bikes and buses.
The new rule "is not going to be the end-all, be-all of safety for pedestrians or cyclists," Martinez said. "But creating a buffer zone will make people think about how safely they're driving and who they're sharing the road with."
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