NEW YORK-Bills that would have required hands-free cellular telephone use by drivers were postponed indefinitely last month in the California and Illinois legislatures.
The California Senate Transportation Committee shelved, with a two-year extension for consideration, a bill introduced by Sen. John Burton of San Francisco. Burton’s bill would have amended the state vehicle code by making it a crime for a person to drive an automotive vehicle on a state highway while operating a handheld cellular telephone.
In Illinois, similar legislation failed to pass the required third reading for a vote by the full General Assembly. It has been returned to the rules committee where it will remain indefinitely until and unless it is re-introduced.
The bill, whose lead sponsor was state Rep. Robert Bugielski of Chicago, would have allowed drivers to place and answer wireless phone calls. But it also would have required them to conduct their conversations in a hands-free mode.
In New York, a bill to create a task force to examine the impact on highway safety of cellular phone use by drivers is now on third and final reading by the full state Senate.
Final vote on the legislation could happen at any time, said James Moriarty, a spokesman for the bill’s lead sponsor, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Norman J. Levy of Merrick, N.Y. “We are discussing the proposal with various interest groups to see if any additional items need to be added to the bill,” Moriarty said.
A companion bill, virtually identical to that sponsored by Sen. Levy, also is under consideration in the New York State Assembly, Moriarty said.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Distracted Driver Task Force has released recommendations that include a coordinated statewide public service driver education campaign.
Advertising agencies are to meet this month with task force members to get details that will help them develop the promotional materials. However, funding sources for the campaign haven’t yet been identified.
The task force, among other things, also recommended a speakers bureau and plans to develop and provide educational materials to driver’s education schools and industrial owners of vehicle fleets.
The Distracted Driver Task Force was formulated more than a year ago after a fatal accident in Jamesville that killed a woman and her young child, said task force member Michael Bie, public relations coordinator for the American Automobile Association-Wisconsin in Madison.
“It was widely reported at the time that this was a cell phone (caused) accident,” Bie said. “But it turned out that the pickup truck driver was using a hands-free cell phone and looking at blueprints in his lap.”
When those details of the crash’s causes became known, the task force broadened its scope to include all kinds of driver distractions that are potential causes of automotive vehicle accidents, he said.
