Hands-free while driving bill goes to Senate, but advocates fear it won't make it to the finish line
Legislation cracking down on distracted driving appears to be stalling in the Florida House during the 2025 session. (Stock photo by Getty Images)
Distracted driving incidents led to the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans in 2022, according to data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In hopes of reducing those corresponding statistics in Florida, individuals and families who have lost loved ones to distracted driving incidents have galvanized this year behind bipartisan legislation that would ban drivers from operating a motor vehicle while using a cellphone in a handheld manner.
The Senate version (SB 1318), sponsored by Southeast Florida Republican Erin Grall, would expand the existing prohibition on texting while driving to include 'using, while driving, a wireless communications device in a handheld manner except to activate, deactivate, initiate, or terminate a feature or function of the device, including a hands-free accessory.'
It passed in the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday, and now will go the Senate floor for final passage.
It's another story in the House, however. It's version (HB 501), sponsored by North Florida Democrat Allison Tant, has gone nowhere to date, and advocates are concerned that another year will go without doing anything to change driver behavior when it comes to our obsession with not being able to look at our phone for 10 minutes.
'The public wants and expects these common-sense laws to pass, and not even allowing it a hearing or the public a voice in this debate is not right,' said Jennifer Smith with StopDistractions.org, a nonprofit group made up of families who have been harmed by distracted driving.
So far, the legislation's trajectory has been the exact opposite of what occurred last session. That's when a version of Tant's bill won approval in three House committees before dying on the floor, while its Senate companion never was heard in committee.
Other states continue to act. Last week, the Iowa Senate passed a bill expanding an existing ban on texting while driving to cover any handheld use of a cellphone, with the measure now headed to Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk. Once it is signed, Iowa will become the 32nd state to adopt such laws.
It took years for Florida to pass a texting-while-driving law during the last decade, and it took Michigan five years to pass a hands-free law, said Steve Kiefer, whose son Mitchel was killed in 2016 at 18 by a driver who was on Snapchat when she rear-ended him. He now runs the Kiefer Foundation, dedicated to ending distracted driving, from his home in Naples.
'Police officers want laws that they can enforce, and hands-free laws are really the only law that we know that will make it very visual,' he said.
That sentiment was shared by William B. Smith, a state trooper from Miami, when speaking at the Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development last week. 'It is a problem. Distracted driving is a current problem and it will continue to be problem as long as we don't pay attention … to what we're doing when we're driving a 6,000 pound killing machine,' he said.
Tant's bill has landed in two House committees, starting with the Government Operations Subcommittee, chaired by Pinellas County Republican Linda Chaney, as well State Affairs, chaired by Manatee County Republican Will Robinson. Neither returned requests for comment.
The legislation would 'authorize law officers to stop motor vehicles and issue citations to persons who are using wireless communications devices in a handheld manner while driving.'
That concerns GOP Sen. Tom Leek, who said while discussing Grall's bill last week in the committee hearing that while he voted to advance the measure, he struggled with 'giving the ability of a government actor to pull you over for doing something that is entirely legal, like holding a telephone.'
But Kiefer blasts that take.
'He was basically saying, 'It's a primary offense to hold a phone. Something that is absolutely legal to do,'' said Kiefer.
'If I was in the room, I would have pointed it out to him that it's also legal to drink, and it's even legal to be drunk in your home, but it's not legal to drink and drive in a car where you're going to harm other people,' he said. 'So, I think it's just very uninformed politicians that don't really understand what the law would do and how effective it has been in every other state.'
During Tuesday's meeting, GOP senators Jonathan Martin and Blaise Ingoglia were the only members of the committee to oppose the measure. Both said that they thought it was too incremental, and didn't go far enough in terms of attacking all distracted driving.
'If we were going to crackdown on distracted driving, we would be including things like shaving, which we've all seen,' Ingoglia said. 'Doing makeup in your vehicle. Eating while driving. Those are all distractions. Anything that takes somebody's attention off of the road into something else in the vehicle should be a form of distracted driving, and it should be dealt with as such.'
Leon County resident Christopher Chapman, who testified earlier in the meeting to describe how life has been much tougher for him after he was injured by a distracted driver, shook his head while listening to Ingoglia's and Martin's quibbles.
'I will agree that this bill is imperfect, but it's the bill that we have in front of us,' he told the Phoenix following the meeting. 'And it does give us a platform to build upon where we can invoke more stringent requirements or more stringent penalties.'
Demetrius Branca lost his son Anthony to a distracted driving accident in 2014, and has made it his mission in his life to get the state to enact tougher laws. That includes attending legislative delegation meetings throughout the state.
In January, he publicly confronted Pinellas County Republican Sen. Nick DiCeglie for his failure to agenda the bill in a committee he chaired last year. The two had words after the meeting, and DiCeglie said he wasn't happy with Branca calling him out.
But in Tuesday's committee, DiCeglie said his conversation with Branca changed his attitude on the issue.
'I tried to take the emotion out of it,' DiCeglie told Branca. 'I looked at the statistics. I looked at the data, and I looked at what 31 other states did. And I thought of you and I thought of your son Anthony.'
'I'm proud that you're standing here in front of us today telling your story,' DiCeglie added. 'That has translated into what I believe is good public policy, and I think that's going to translate into saving lives. And regardless of what happens this point forward, I think that you can look yourself in the mirror and know that you did what was right in your heart.'
If Tant's bill doesn't get heard soon in the House, such legislation is likely dead for 2025, something Kiefer says will be an irresponsible decision by lawmakers.
'It took us five years to get it done in Michigan,' he acknowledged. 'We've got people playing politics in the House and they won't hear it in the subcommittees, which of course will block it.'
Jacksonville Democratic Sen. Tracie Davis revealed during Tuesday's committee meeting that her sister was killed by a distracted driver while jogging in Tallahassee. Although the proposal doesn't address the entire problem, she said, it is a necessary first step.
'Colleagues, we need your help in ensuring that the House chamber understands how important this is as well,' she said.
Grall ended her close on the bill Tuesday by getting intensely personal with her colleagues.
'If it's not your family who has someone taken from you, what if it's you who takes someone from someone else? How will you carry that with you? We must change our behavior. This is to me is not acceptable any longer. If we can't be examples from this chamber, with this legislature, then we have a problem.'
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