Distracted driving bill garners Senate discussion, moves forward
A bill in the Montana Senate would make it illegal to be on your phone while driving (Daily Montanan file photo).
A proposal to address distracted driving on Montana roadways passed the state Senate on Saturday following an emotional floor debate.
Senate Bill 359, which bill sponsor Sen. Sara Novak, D-Anaconda, is calling 'Chloe's Law,' would make Montana the final state to adopt distracted driving laws.
The bill would make holding or using a mobile device while driving illegal and supports using hands-free technology. The legislation was motivated by the death of a young woman, Chloe Worl, who was killed by a distracted driver in March 2021.
Novak said on the Senate floor she was the woman's driver's education instructor.
'My shock and sadness led to many thoughts about that crash as a teacher,' Novak said. 'My mind repeatedly has played out so many times with questions as to if I do enough to teach these kids about defensive driving.'
The bill allows for hands-free devices — including smart watches — as well as earpieces. It sets fines for violations as well, with a first offense garnering a ticket between $75 and $149 for a first violation and jumps up to a minimum fine of $150 on any subsequent offense.
The bill cleared a second reading 33-17 on Saturday.
'This isn't about throwing a hammer down,' Novak said on the Senate floor. 'It's about doing little things that we can do to keep our roads safer in the state of Montana.'
Connie Worl, who is Chloe's mother, testified in support of the legislation during the bill's hearing in the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee on Feb. 26. Chloe, who worked at Barrett Hospital in Dillon, was 25 at the time of her death.
'The driver who killed our daughter crossed the rumble strips, and she was so distracted by whatever was happening on her cell phone, texting, Snapchatting, social media, she drove in Chloe's lane for the length of a football field,' Connie said. 'She had no idea she was in Chloe's lane. She never hit her brakes. She slammed into our daughter, and she killed her instantly.'
On the Senate floor, the bill received significant debate.
Sen. Jeremy Trebas, R-Great Falls, had multiple issues with the bill. He said it's a local control issue, that drivers would just change their behavior to hide their phone use and that it would create more pressure on the court system.
'This will have an effect on county courts and their budgets and their workload. So just take that under consideration,' Trebas said on the Senate floor. 'Maybe it's worth it to you. It could be, but just know that that's what you're doing. You're pushing more costs on the counties.'
Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, expressed worry about racial profiling, saying he was voting no on the bill because of that.
Other comments touched on whether or not it would apply to self-driving cars. Novak said that anyone in the driver's seat would be banned from mobile devices while in operation of the vehicle.
The Montana Department of Transportation was a proponent of the bill, which Novak said she did not expect.
Sen. Derek Harvey, D-Butte, who is a Butte-Silver Bow firefighter, expressed some frustration on the floor regarding accidents caused by distracted driving.
'I respond to these calls,' Harvey said. 'I've responded to a lot of these calls. I've seen these scenes. I've dealt with these scenes. I've turned around, turned my back on these scenes, and found people videotaping, holding their phone up, driving by the scenes while I just saw what I saw inside of that car. It's pretty ironic to me.'
Discussion also came up about revenue from the fines, with Sen. Barry Usher, R-Billings, saying on the floor that 'this was about money' and that, 'they're just using the heart strings to try and get it.'
Some of the comments heard on the floor alleging ulterior motives got a rebuke from Senate minority leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade.
'When we start impugning the intent of a sponsor, I think it's really disrespectful,' Flowers said. 'And I'd ask that we avoid doing that in the future.'
Almost 41,000 people were killed in car crashes in 2023 in the U.S. According to AAA, distracted driving was responsible for 58% of crashes during a study the organization conducted.
'This is personal to me on many levels, and I'm honored, as I said, to carry this,' Novak said on the floor. 'And I also feel like it's a gut punch, as you can see, to carry this. So to say that this is about money or MDT is absolutely disingenuous.'
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The Trump administration's immigration raids are squarely a Latino issue. Not because immigration is a Latino issue — all issues are Latino issues — but because Trump's immigration enforcement is and has always been racially motivated. From Trump's campaign announcement in 2015, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, to his fixation with building a wall across our southern border and having Mexico pay for it, to his 2024 campaign focused on falsehoods about immigrants and criminality, the central narrative has been 'us' versus 'them.' Immigration is a concern in every city and state, yet Trump's immigration enforcement seems to be exclusively focused on Latino communities. In Los Angeles, Trump's raids are explicitly targeting Latino-majority neighborhoods and cities including Westlake, Paramount and Compton, going beyond data-informed enforcement actions to the racial profiling of Latinos near schools, tending to errands like getting a car washed or sitting in a church parking lot. Over the last week, Los Angeles has been ground zero for Trump's federal overreach. Padilla's silencing and removal follow refusals to admit four U.S. House representatives at the Los Angeles federal detention center on Saturday and three representatives to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Adelanto on Sunday. While immigration raids raise serious policy and human rights concerns, the unequal treatment of Latino congressional leaders by the Trump administration represents a different kind of hazard: a test for control of our democratic republic. America has three co-equal branches: legislative, executive, judiciary. This system of separation of powers and checks and balances is designed to prevent tyranny and ensure a balanced government. For the last five months, the Trump administration has upended our system of governance. The Trump administration bypassed Congress' budgetary actions by eliminating foreign aid. Trump officials willfully ignored judicial orders. They've blocked sitting members of the House and Senate from entering federal buildings, obstructed them from conducting oversight and undermined their inquiries. Like Trump's immigration enforcement actions, the administration's overreach is racially motivated. Latinos have long expressed that no one is listening to their needs — that they are left out of the conversation and never at the table where decisions are being made. Research has made clear that Latinos bear the brunt of underrepresentation across important societal institutions such as academia, private enterprise, philanthropy and news media. The list goes on. Unfortunately, when Latinos achieve positions that ought to wield power — such as Padilla's ascent to the Senate — the positions themselves tend to be diminished, so that — again, like Padilla being silenced at a press conference — the Latinos who gain prominence are denied the power that non-Latinos enjoy in parallel positions. This week's events provide a new chapter in the diminishment of Latino agency and dignity; members of Congress were denied entry to do their jobs, and in the case of Padilla, forcibly removed and detained. One thing is consistent: the repeated dehumanization of Latinos and their needs. Latinos are not a monolith, but the Trump administration is surely treating us as such. His administration has rolled out a carte blanche attack on Latinos. From Latino community members being stalked and apprehended in Home Depot parking lots, at places of worship or their children's school graduations, to targeted attacks on the sustainability and operations of Latino-led nonprofit organizations, to the physical assault of a U.S. senator. The subjugation of Latinos is currently on full display in Los Angeles, a region that fuels the world's fourth-largest economy (California) and is the global epicenter of media and entertainment. The absence of meaningful Latino participation in shaping narratives, trends and the public imagination is cause for concern. Any conversation on the fragility of American democracy, the resurgence of fascism and authoritarianism and the future of the Constitution is, inherently, a discourse about Latinos — and about all Americans. So long as Latinos remain silenced, ostracized and relegated to the periphery in conversations about the future of this nation, that future remains bleak. The test of how America responds in real time to the wholesale attack on its second-largest demographic group is now a shared assignment. And the group's leader is Padilla. Sonja Diaz is a civil rights attorney and co-founder of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab and UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
