Covington Senator Patrick McMath introduces this year’s effort to ban all handheld phone use for drivers.
McMath says passing the law would save a lot of lives by reducing the number of crashes, and reducing the number of crashes would also save state drivers a lot of money.
“While public safety is really the primary purpose of this bill, the chance to perhaps lower insurance rates for Louisianans could be a secondary benefit from this,” says McMath.
The Republican cited stats showing Louisiana claims the nation’s 7th highest distracted driving rate.
McMath says his legislation proposes fines for an offense that is about average for the 20 states that do have total handheld driving bans.
“It’s going to be 100 dollars for the first incident, 200 dollars for the next, and 300 dollars for anything third offense and beyond,” says McMath.
McMath’s bill would allow drivers brief use of their phone to click to receive a call, make an emergency call, or respond to their GPS,
Seven states, including Louisiana, have partial bans on handheld use, but McMath says partial bans like ours can be nearly impossible to enforce.
“An officer sees you on your phone, pulls you over saying you were texting and driving, and it is very easy for the person to say they were changing music on their phone,” says McMath.
Last session a similar version of this bill cleared the House, then Senate, but a compromise effort returned to the House and failed by a few votes.
