HARRISBURG — The latest legislative push to have Pennsylvania join all neighboring states and ban the use of handheld cell phones by drivers was launched formally on Wednesday when a Senate committee passed a bill under the hopeful gaze of Eileen Miller.
The Scranton resident’s 21-year-old son, Paul, was killed in 2010 in a crash involving a distracted driver, and in most of the years since, Sen. Rosemary Brown, R-Monroe, has been trying without success to get lawmakers to approve a bill to get cell phones out of the hands of drivers. On Tuesday, the Senate Transportation Committee passed the latest version of Ms. Brown’s bill by a 13-1 vote.
“It feels great,” said Ms. Miller, whose son died when he was on his way to work at a supermarket and a truck crossed a grassy median and struck his car head-on. A few months after this death, she told a reporter, “Paul’s death has just devastated our family. I’m not sure what the most effective thing for me to do would be, but I know I have to do something.”
Ultimately, a New Jersey tractor-trailer driver pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the crash, which occurred on July 5, 2010, on Route 33 in Monroe County.
On Wednesday, Ms. Miller watched as Ms. Brown delivered a plea to lawmakers in a Capitol meeting room to stop drivers in Pennsylvania from handling cell phones. Ms. Brown said she has been working on the issue for nearly 10 years, first as a state representative and then as a senator following her win in last year’s election.
“If there is anybody in this room – I would ask you to stand up, I would ask you to raise your hand – if you do not think that cell phone use, people holding their cell phone, texting, distracted while driving, is not a problem,” Ms. Brown said. Alluding to issues that complicated passage of bills in the past, Ms. Brown said the version acted on by the committee was the “absolute best” the Legislature was going to see.
The state already has a law that prohibits texting while driving. It has been widely criticized because it does not ban making phone calls or checking websites while driving.
“Right now we are doing nothing. The texting law is not enforceable. It is not working,” Ms. Brown said.
Other states that already have laws barring the use of handheld devices by drivers include all of Pennsylvania’s neighbors: Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia. Advocates have pointed out that a Pennsylvania ban would lessen confusion among drivers making a long-distance trip through several states.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 25 states have comprehensive bans on cell phone use while driving.
In the last legislative session, the bill got pushback from lawmakers who were concerned it would be a source of “pretextual” traffic stops, in which a driver is stopped for a relatively minor offense in the belief that a more serious offense may have been committed. Broken taillights are another traffic stop cause sometimes called pretextual.
Rep. Donna Bullock, D-Philadelphia and chairperson of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus, said those types of traffic stops are believed to disproportionately involve people of color.
On Wednesday, the committee in a split vote passed an amendment that stripped out provisions on the reporting of data on traffic stops. Committee Chairman Sen. Wayne Langerholc, R-Cambria, said the amendment was discussed with the Fraternal Order of Police and Pennsylvania State Police, and was necessary for the bill to have their support.
The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Marty Flynn, D-Lackawanna, was among those who voted against the amendment and said he and others “don’t see information as a bad thing.” Ms. Brown, responding to Mr. Flynn, said she did not disagree with him, but that she believed collecting data on traffic stops should be proposed in a separate bill.
In an interview Wednesday, Ms. Bullock said her concerns from last session remain the same. She said she hoped to work with Ms. Brown and others to either amend the bill later in the legislative process, or have a system of traffic stop data reporting created through a separate piece of legislation.
The bottom line, Ms. Bullock said, was that the state must have a system in place to analyze “what is happening in traffic stops in this Commonwealth.”
Ms. Brown’s bill now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
First Published: May 10, 2023, 9:04 p.m.
Updated: May 11, 2023, 3:48 p.m.