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| Ban slams the brakes on texting by truckers |
| By dallasnews.com |
| Published: 01/27/2010 |
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By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER and TOM BENNING / The Dallas Morning News President Barack Obama to truckers: Keep your hands on the wheel and save your text messages for later. Obama's transportation secretary on Tuesday banned truckers and commercial bus drivers from sending and receiving text messages, leaving the Texas Department of Public Safety scrambling to figure out how to enforce it. The new rules, first broached last fall but announced with little warning Tuesday, carry stiff fines and prohibit sending or receiving text messages by truckers and commercial bus drivers, as well as by some local drivers, such as Dallas Area Rapid Transit operators. "Today we're sending a strong message," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said. "We don't merely expect you to share the road responsibly with other travelers – we require you to do so." It's the latest in a Washington campaign to make drivers keep their eyes on the road in an age of wireless devices increasingly prone to distract them. Last month, Obama ordered about 3 million federal workers to stay off their cellphones while driving. He strongly encouraged states and companies alike to follow suit. The news was greeted by lukewarm support from the trucking industry, which sees such bans as appropriate, but faulted the haste with which the move was made. Texas trucker Jeff Barker says he sees no reason to single out commercial drivers, although after 14 years of crisscrossing the continent, he said he readily agrees that drivers who text are courting disaster. He often drives through Dallas, where he will be today, he said. "I used to do it, until I began seeing the effect it was having on other drivers," said Barker of San Antonio. "Now I pull over before I send a text. But it should apply to all drivers. To single out bus drivers and truckers is kind of stupid. "I can see it every day from drivers of all types: A distracted driver is a hell of a danger to everybody out there, and it doesn't matter what kind of vehicle they are in." "You can pretty much see everything [from inside a truck cab], and you can tell when a driver is distracted, by putting on makeup, by talking on the phone or sending texts. We can see a lot from up here, including folks typing on laptops and doing a lot of other things." Already, 19 states ban texting from behind the wheel. Texas forbids texting by drivers younger than 18, by school bus drivers and by motorists in a school zone or who are transporting a child. But Tuesday's announcement makes sending, or even reading, a text message while driving a federal safety offense, too, and could put some commercial drivers at risk of losing their authority to operate – plus subject them to fines of up to $2,750 for each offense. How those tickets will be issued and under what circumstances wasn't immediately clear. Federal safety rules are typically enforced by state inspectors and highway patrols. Tela Mange, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman, said Tuesday's announcement came with so little warning that her agency is still working out the details of how to police the thousands of commercial operators on Texas roads each day. "Generally, they would propose something like this and say, 'Within a certain amount of days, we're going to do this,' " Mange said. "But this is them saying, 'We're going to start doing this today.' So it's going to take us a while, at least a few days, to figure out how we're going to enforce it." Mange said DPS patrols already routinely cite drivers for violations of state and federal safety rules, including violations of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Act. The Obama administration has embarked on a spirited campaign to protect drivers from distracted driving, which some experts have called as dangerous as drunken driving. Earlier this month, LaHood stood with Grapevine resident Jennifer Smith to announce the formation of FocusDriven, a national nonprofit organization that will campaign for bans on talking and texting while driving. The group, modeled after Mothers Against Drunk Driving, put its first local chapter in the Dallas area. Smith said Tuesday the ban made her "very happy." "This shows that the federal government is taking this seriously," she said. "The dangers exist, and there need to be safety measures involved." Read More. |
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