This month, the Sugar Land City Council is slated to consider an ordinance that would restrict the use of cellphones and other wireless devices among drivers within the city’s borders. The ordinance will be put before council members at their Feb. 7 meeting and will require mobile devices be set to hands-free or Bluetooth mode in order to be used legally while driving, said Scott Schultz, Sugar Land assistant police chief.

“The idea is to change the driving behavior of the motoring public to make things safer,” Schultz said.

Shultz said he was tapped to investigate the ordinances put in place by other Texas cities in order to deliver recommendations to the council before the vote takes place.

Missouri City banned texting while driving in 2010.

Policing the problem  

For nearly a year, Schultz studied research on distracted driving caused by cellphone use and looked at what other cities have done to get people to put down their handheld electronic devices while behind the wheel, he said.

Schultz examined a Texas city that passed a law requiring drivers to have their cellphones mounted to their dashboard if they use them while driving. The spirit of that law meant to keep phones out of drivers’ hands and stop people from looking down at their phones while driving. 

However, the wording of the law only stated the device had to be “attached” to the vehicle, Schultz said. So, people were getting out of paying citations by arguing that their cellphone was indeed attached to the car via their battery charger.

“The law didn’t define what ‘attached,’ meant,” Schultz said. “We’re learning about loopholes like that.”

Sgt. Kenneth Smith, Fort Bend County traffic enforcement officer in the Precinct 2 constable’s office, was injured when a driver he believes was distracted by her cellphone rear-ended his patrol car a few years ago. 

Smith and a recruit were in a sheriff’s car parked on the side of the Fort Bend Parkway Toll Road when a car slammed into the back of their Crown Victoria. 

Both Smith and the recruit were taken to the hospital, and both vehicles were totaled in the crash, he said. 

Smith said when he pulls a driver over for an infraction he believes was caused by using an electronic device while driving, those drivers are usually apologetic but do not generally acknowledge their device distracted them.

“People already know that it can cause an accident, but they take a chance and do it anyway,” he said.

This disconnect between knowledge and behavior was borne out in a 2013 Texas A&M University survey of 3,036 Texans and their opinions on texting and driving. 

The survey found 68 percent of respondents said they believe sending or reading messages while driving is never safe, and another 40 percent said talking on a cellphone while driving is never safe. 

When asked about their own driving behavior, over three-quarters of those same respondents said they had talked on their cellphone while driving in the past month, and nearly half said they had read or typed messages while driving in that time.  

Tracking usage

Texas is one of a few states that does not restrict drivers’ use of mobile devices, although the Legislature has considered such bills three times—only to see them stall or fail. State Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, filed bills in each of the past three consecutive legislative sessions—and another bill this session—seeking to ban texting while driving. 

State Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, has been especially vocal among opponents of Craddick’s legislation, arguing that such bans are difficult ot enforce and have the potential to violate people’s rights. 

Among cities that enacted bans in the past, law enforcement agencies sometimes purchase additional equipment and reallocate resources to police the roads. For example, in Austin, the police department takes a bus out onto area highways to catch motorists using their mobile devices. Spotters on the bus radio patrol officers to let them know of violators. 

Burton has said statewide text bans raise Fourth Amendment protection concerns and could lead to racial profiling by giving law enforcement another reason to pull over drivers and possibly search their possessions. 

Efforts to date

There were five crashes in Sugar Land in 2016 in which a driver's use of a phone or electronic mobile device played a factor, down from 11 in 2015. In Missouri City, the number of crashes in which a driver's use of a phone or electronic mobile device played a factor held steady at seven crashes in 2015 and 2016. 

The city’s media relations specialist Cory Stottlemyer said in an email the ordinance does not apply to the use of a mobile device for telephone conversations or when using a navigation system.

In addition to city ordinances, corporations have developed digital options for reducing the number of accidents due to distracted driving. 

Earlier this year, College Station resident Marci Corry invented an app that she hopes will reduce the amount of distracted driving in Texas. Once the app has been downloaded to a phone and opened, the user will see a photo of his or her family whenever a text message is received. Corry’s hope is that the photo of loved ones will be a reminder of the important things in life that could be put in danger by opening and reading the text message while driving. 

In addition, Corry said she has partnered with area businesses to help with the issue. The app awards points to the phone owner for every minute the app is open on the phone. The points can then be redeemed at those local businesses.

Stottlemyer said the penalty for violating the ordinance carries a fine of up to $500, and each citation is considered a separate offense. Schultz said the city of Sugar Land has not yet determined the penalties that will be stipulated in its proposed ordinance. 

“People are using their phones like they’re their lifelines,” Fort Bend County Corporal Larry Jenkins said. “People are more worried about texting [and] looking at documents on their phone; they’re allowing that to take the place of careful driving.”