Alaska Reps. Les Gara and Bill Thomas said Wednesday that they will revisit an existing state law banning electronic device use while driving, after a magistrate in Kenai ruled the current law was too ambiguous to enforce.
Magistrate Jennifer Wells said that the law, which bans the use of items with a screen, was not explicit about banning text messaging. Her ruling followed a similar debate over the law in Fairbanks, where a training judge advised magistrates not to enforce the texting-while-driving ban.
Gara said that revisiting the law is simply a way to expedite the legal hurdles posed by challenges to the current language, "rather than go a year or two while people in parts of the state aren't being prosecuted.
"We want to make sure it's clear to the courts that we always intended that it's illegal to text while driving," Gara, D-Anchorage, said.
Use of electronic devices while driving is a hot-button issue these days. Ashley Bashore, a 19-year-old Anchorage woman, was recently arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide for hitting a man last Easter; police allege she was texting immediately before or during the accident, which killed 28-year-old Hubert Tunuchuk.
At the federal level, the National Transportation Safety Board last month recommended a ban on the use of all personal electronic devices while operating any motor vehicle. This would cover everything from laptop computers to cellphones while operating a car, boat, or plane. It's up to the individual states to determine the degree to which they would ban the devices.
Nine states currently have bans on all cellphone use while driving, and 35 states ban texting while driving.
"We think the current law is OK, we agree with the judges that have been enforcing it," Gara said. "There's a good faith disagreement among the judges. So instead of the words 'texting' or 'video,' we say 'typing.'"
Three other Alaska lawmakers have other laws pending with the Legislature governing cell phone use while driving, but Gara said those bills are moving slowly, and the language amending the existing law likely wouldn't be attached to one of them.
Two of those bills -- one sponsored by Juneau Republican Rep. Cathy Munoz and the other by Anchorage Democratic Rep. Mike Doogan -- would ban all handheld cellphone use while driving, a harder sell than texting, which is generally seen as a more distracting activity.
Ultimately, Gara said, the goal of the ban on texting while driving is to enhance public safety, and the new language would help to speed up the approval process.
"This is a public safety issue. When people type or text while they're driving, they are endangering people's lives. That's not acceptable," said Rep. Thomas, R-Haines.
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com