Texting hearing: ‘Easy for us to enforce’

Idaho State Police Capt. Ryan Zimmerman told the Senate Transportation Committee that SB 1274, the anti-texting while driving bill, is strongly supported by the ISP. “It is very cleanly written easy to understand, and easy for us to enforce,” he said.

Sen. Jim Hammond, R-Coeur d’Alene, the bill’s sponsor, said, “There have been several attempts to pass a texting bill in our Legislature over the past three sessions. They have all failed. I brought forth a bill that is very simple and straightforward.” It just defines texting, he said, and, ” Now if you do that, it’s an infraction and a law enforcement officer can cite you for it.” He said, “I do this because I think this is a new technology that specifically needs to be called out in legislation. … It’s become very obvious to me that it’s necessary to call out this specific activity as inappropriate and unlawful.”

Among those testifying in favor of the bill so far are Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, who introduced the Sauer family, her neighbors; Janelle deWeerd of the city of Meridian mayor’s youth advisory council, who noted that her city has banned texting while driving; and Dave Carlson of the AAA, who said 35 states now ban texting while driving, with most of those laws passed in just the last three years, and in a recent statewide survey, 87 percent of Idahoans favored banning texting while driving. No one has testified against the bill.