Should driving while texting be a crime?

By The Wall Street Journal

During the morning rush hour on Dec. 5, the 53-year-old driver of a blue Dodge Caravan was traveling north on Interstate 5 outside Seattle when he took his eyes off the road to scan an e-mail on his BlackBerry, the State Patrol says. And that's how he hit the white Mazda, which clipped the green Honda, which rammed the black Toyota SUV before spinning into the other lane and plowing into a city bus.

Nobody was seriously hurt. But the episode sparked a chain reaction of a different sort in the Washington State Legislature in the form of a bill that would make it a crime to "operate a motor vehicle while reading, writing or sending electronic messages."

"I think just about everyone realizes that text messaging while driving should not be acceptable," says Joyce McDonald, the bill's sponsor. But the Republican member of the Washington House of Representatives also recognizes that people call it "CrackBerry" for a reason: She cheerfully admits she'd probably scan her own device on the drive to work "if I didn't need my reading glasses to see e-mail."

Forget DWI. The big new traffic-safety issue is DWT: Driving While Texting.

McDonald is joining a crowd of politicians seeking a crackdown. In neighboring Oregon, pending bills would provide fines -- up to $720 in one of them -- for any driver caught texting or holding a cell phone to an ear. And in Arizona, a bill is pending that would make DWT a ticketable offense.

DWT is an extreme version of a whole new class of modern "distracted driving" issues lawmakers are wrestling with as electronic devices become an ever more important part of people's lives, in and out of their automobiles. Lawmakers are being encouraged by insurance companies like Allstate, which has added an e-mail fanatic to its stable of "multitasker" safe-driving ads. The campaign shows the "dedicated investor," who is balancing a BlackBerry and the business section of a newspaper on the wheel while he navigates his sports car through stop-and-go traffic. (Another scene in the ad shows a driver changing his trousers while blazing down the highway).

Driving while talking on cell phones has gotten the most legislative attention. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, California and the District of Columbia outlaw the use of handheld phones while driving, and 38 states are currently considering 133 bills that would regulate their use behind the wheel, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some wireless-industry supporters argue that statutes barring texting while driving are too specific. What is needed, they say, is not narrowly focused legislation, but a campaign to educate the public about all driver distractions. In Washington, D.C., an industry lobby group called CTIA -- The Wireless Association has begun tracking legislation, including McDonald's bill, and scratching out a strategy to counter it.

"I don't think you'd find anyone who would say that trying to text and drive is not reckless behavior," says Joe Farren, spokesman for the group. "If you're being reckless, you should get a ticket." He adds that his group has taken no formal position on text-message bills such as McDonald's.

Reading and typing in traffic

Few driver distractions seem quite as frighteningly intrusive as attempting to read and type messages while weaving in traffic. The first reported incident of DWT may have been in Tennessee in 2005, when a man died while texting when he lost control of his pickup and plunged down an embankment. In Colorado that same year, a teenager served 10 days in jail after he struck and killed a bicyclist while texting a friend.

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