Paul Hammel
LINCOLN — A record-high 19 Nebraskans lost their lives in distracted driving crashes in 2020, and a state legislative committee was urged Tuesday to do something about it.
But judging from the response from members of the Legislature’s Transportation and Telecommunications Committee, one step to do that — making texting while driving a primary offense — faces a tough road ahead, as in past years.
“Where do you draw the line?” asked State Sen. Mike Moser of Columbus, who chairs the committee.
Moser, along with some other members of the committee, posed a bevy of questions Tuesday about allowing law enforcement officers to pull over someone they see texting on a cell phone.
What would an officer have to witness? How could you prove someone was texting? Why not go after other forms of distractions, such as watching a video or talking on a cell phone or eating while driving? Would the bill be used to target drivers of color?
The questions have helped to derail several past efforts in the Legislature to make texting while driving a primary offense, which is now the law in 45 other states.
Currently, texting while driving in Nebraska is a secondary offense — like wearing a seat belt — for which a driver can be ticketed only if stopped for another infraction or if involved in an accident.
Central City Sen. Loren Lippincott, who was elected in 2022, has reintroduced the measure this year as Legislative Bill 1033, saying that Nebraska ought to join the growing number of states that are cracking down on cell phone use to reduce deaths and injuries.
“All the other states have done this. We need to get on board,” he said.
Patrol wrote 112 tickets last year
Last year, the Nebraska State Patrol wrote 112 tickets for texting while driving, an increase from the 76 citations written in 2022 and the 88 tickets issued in 2021. (The numbers include some tickets written to commercial truck drivers, who are already banned from using cell phones for any purpose while driving.)
But a Douglas County Sheriff’s lieutenant and advocates for highway safety said that making texting a primary offense has been shown to successfully change driver behavior and reduce cell phone use while driving by up to 76%.
“Driver behavior is very responsive to cell phone laws,” said Lt. Tim Owens of the Sheriff’s Office.
That office, Owens said, has investigated 35 accidents since 2019 linked to cell phone use.
In 2020 — the most recent year for which state statistics were available — there were 3,924 vehicle crashes statewide in which distracted driving was a factor, along with a record 19 fatalities, according to the Nebraska Department of Transportation Highway Safety Office.
That same office reported that 31% of crashes with drivers 19 years of age and younger involved cell phone use.
But enforcement is difficult, Owens told the committee. The sheriff’s office participated in campaigns during the past two years to crack down on driving while texting. But the “U Drive, U Text, U Pay” initiative in Douglas County, he said, resulted in no tickets being issued, which he blamed on the “weakened platform” of current state law.
Eric Koeppe of Safe Driving Nebraska said making texting only a secondary offense “sends the message” to officers and drivers that it’s not a priority.
34 states ban all hand-held cell phone use
Koeppe called LB 1033 a first step, and if the state really wanted to put a dent in distracted driving accidents and deaths, he said, it would do what 34 other states have done, which is to ban any use of a hand-held cell phone while driving.
“That’s the ultimate solution,” he said.
Koeppe added that a 2019 poll indicated that 89% of Nebraskans supported a law that allowed law enforcement to stop a driver and ticket them “solely” for texting.
But Spike Eickholt, representing the ACLU of Nebraska and the state’s criminal defense lawyers, opposed the bill. He said that law enforcement can already pull over “bad” or distracted drivers for a variety of reasons, such as driving too fast or too slow, swerving out of their lane or following too closely.
Already a crime
Plus, it’s already a crime — albeit a secondary crime — to text while driving, Eickholt said.
“This will do something more,” he said, empowering a police officer to pull someone over based on their observation.
Brainard Sen. Bruce Bostelman said the bill was “picking and choosing” one distraction to driving over others, and Lincoln Sen. Carolyn Bosn, a former prosecutor, questioned how an officer could prove someone was texting.
After the hearing, Lippincott said he was unsure whether someone would prioritize LB 1033, which would help its chances of being advanced by a clearly skeptical Transportation Committee and advancing to debate by the full Legislature.
There might be one glimmer of hope: In August, Gov. Jim Pillen described an incident in which a distracted driver forced the vehicle in which he was riding off the road.
His comment then was that some “serious conversations” were necessary on the issue of distracted driving.