Texas Legislature To Reconsider Ban on Texting While Driving

Texas Rep. Tom Craddick, a Republican, said he refiled a bill for the Legislature to consider in the 2015 session that would institute a statewide ban on texting while driving. The legislature previously passed the bill, the Alex Brown Memorial Act (HB-80), during the 2011 and 2013 sessions but retiring Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, vetoed it both times. Craddick said he named the bill for Alex Brown, a 17-year-old who died in a car crash in 2009 that occurred when she was texting. Texas bans texting while driving for drivers under the age of 18, cellphone use for school bus drivers while driving a bus occupied by children and all drivers’ use of mobile devices while they're in a school zone. Forty-four other states, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have laws banning or otherwise limiting texting for all drivers. Thirty-eight Texas municipalities have banned texting while driving, but the lack of a statewide law creates a “patchwork of local ordinances that confuses drivers,” Craddick said in a statement Monday.