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Senate bans Texting while Driving

Senate bans Texting while Driving
The Senate Bill 146, legislation of Oklahoma that bans the practice of texting while driving has recently been passed by the state Senate in a 32 to 9 vote! The bill that was authored by Senator Jerry Ellis and co-authored by Representative Danny Morgan states that fines can be issued in cases of texting and driving and could even exceed speeding if it is signed by Governor Mary Fallin.

Morgan’s bill aims to ban texting while driving for driver’s under the age of 18, while Ellis’ bill aims to ban texting and driving for all drivers, except for emergency and medical personnel or law enforcement officials. The current state law bans drivers under the age of 17 years from texting while driving.

Surprisingly, the young drivers have supported this bill the most, as they have all grown up texting and driving and know how dangerous it can be. Oklahoma only ranks second in texting per capita. The Distracted Driver Act that was passed by Governor Brad Henry allows police officers to issue tickets to drivers in accidents if the cause has been distracted driving.

Texting and driving is a huge distraction that is compared to drinking coffee while driving or changing the radio while driving, except that none of these other things has the kind of distractive effect on a person’s mind the way that texting does. Hopefully, people will begin to understand just how dangerous it is to text and drive.

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