WASHINGTON-A bill to ban driver use of handheld cell phones in California unexpectedly died in the state legislature after a Senate amendment so watered down the measure as to prompt the bill’s chief sponsor to seek its defeat.
The Assembly in May passed legislation to require drivers to use hands-free devices to make cell-phone calls while behind the wheel. A rider was attached to the bill in the Senate Transportation Committee on Tuesday that would have increased the penalty for an individual guilty of reckless driving as a result of distractions ranging from personal grooming to food consumption to operating electronic devices to interacting with passengers or pets. In addition, the amendment would prohibit drivers under the age of 18 from using mobile phones in any form.
As a result, Assemblyman Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) was forced into the awkward position of rounding up Senate support to vote against his bill because he believed it did not achieve his objective to curb distracted driving by taking cell phones out of the hands of drivers.
Simitian said he suspects some Senate Transportation Committee members were doing the bidding of the mobile-phone industry.
“Clearly, the amendment was an industry-supported alternative designed to scuttle my bill,” Simitian told RCR Wireless News Wednesday. “I introduced the bill because it will save lives, and I’m going to keep pushing until we have a sensible hands-free law in California.”
Simitian said he would ask the Senate Transportation Committee to reconsider its action or will reintroduce a bill banning driver operation of handheld phones early next year.
New York and several towns across the Unites States have made it illegal for drivers to talk on handheld phones on the road. Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 mobile-phone carrier, prefers statewide bans on handheld phone use by drivers to a hodgepodge of different laws throughout the country.
