Michigan House advances distracted driving bills

February 1, 2022

Ryan Witkowski

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Michigan is looking to take their distracted driving laws one step further. The Michigan House advanced a package of three bills on Jan. 25 that expands not only what is considered distracted driving but also which devices motorists will have to avoid using.

Currently, Michigan law prohibits drivers from reading, typing or sending messages on a device held in the hand or lap. The new package would expand the law to the use of social media while driving.

All three bills – HB4277, HB4278, and HB4279 – passed the house by an overwhelming nonpartisan vote. The bipartisan package will now move to the Michigan Senate for consideration.

The sponsor of HB4277, Rep. Mari Manoogian, D-Birmingham, said that the law would allow the state to keep up with ever-changing technology.

“Current Michigan law bans texting while driving, which narrowly means the act of typing a text message on your cellphone,” Manoogian said in an Associated Press article. “That means a driver can still stream Netflix, shop on Amazon, record a TikTok or take a Zoom call on-camera while driving and still be compliant with Michigan law.”

Additionally, the bill modifies the definition of devices to include myriad other electronic devices, among them cellphones, pagers, laptops, tablets and “any similar device that is readily removable from a vehicle and is used to write, send or read text or data or capture images or video through manual input.”

Exemptions from the distracted driving enforcement would be made for hands-free devices, emergency calls, GPS or selecting a number on a phone.

Penalties for distracted driving would also increase under the new law. First offenders could face a fine of $100 or 16 hours of community service. Any subsequent offense would result in a $250 fine for each offense and/or possibly 24 hours of community service.

Under the legislation, fines would be doubled if the driver is involved in a crash while they are on an electronic device. A second violation would accumulate one point against their driving record and two points for each additional violation. A court could suspend their license for 90 days if a driver accumulates three or more violations within a three-year span.

Manoogian said lawmakers need to intercede to keep drivers safe.

“Michigan’s roads are still far too dangerous. Too many Michiganders are not making it home at the end of the day,” Manoogian said in a Detroit News article. “As a body it is up to us to do everything we can to keep Michigan safe.”

Washington was the first state to pass a texting ban in 2007. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, 48 states ban text messaging for all drivers. Missouri and Montana are the only two states that do not ban texting for all drivers.

According to 2019 data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, distracted driving crashes killed 3,142 people in the United States – an average of nine deaths per day. That number was up 10% from the previous year (2,839 deaths in 2018).

A 2017 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that texting and visual-manual tasks increase the odds of crash involvement by 83%. LL