The state Assembly approved the Senate’s amendment to change the fine for texting while driving, ultimately passing the bill onto the governor’s office to be signed by Gov. Jim Doyle.
The amendment, which changed the minimum fine for first time offenders from $100 to $20, was passed in the Assembly by a majority voice vote.
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Wisconsin drivers may need to think twice before pulling out their cell phones on the road after the state Senate passed a bill Tuesday banning drivers from texting at the wheel.
The bill prohibits a person from “driving while composing or sending an electronic text message,” but makes an exception for emergency vehicles as well as GPS devices.
After debating the bill for nearly an hour, the Senate adopted an amendment reducing the minimum fine for a first time offender from $100 to $20, a move many thought would increase the impact of the bill.
“I talked to a judge in my district the other day and he said, ‘You know, whenever you guys add some fee onto a ticket, the officers quit writing them, because they know it’s very excessive,'” Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said. “This amendment [brings] fines back down to a reasonable level and I think at the end of the day we will see more tickets given to people who text than if we don’t.”
But other legislators felt the opposite could occur.
“We currently have inattentive driving statutes on the books, and oftentimes they’re not enforced because the fine is too low,” Sen. Jeffrey Plale, D-Milwaukee, said. “That’s why they don’t have that deterrent factor, because they don’t have the punch that they really should have.”
Instead of grouping texting under the umbrella term of “inattentive driving,” the bill singles out a specific action in an effort to reach out to young drivers.
But Plale also emphasized one of the only ways to change the attitudes of young drivers, like his teenage son, was to hit them where it hurts most: their pocketbooks.
“No amount of laws is going to make [my son] not text. That’s my job, the job of the parents and of driving instructors. And if he’s stupid enough to do it and gets caught, he ought to get zapped in the wallet,” Plale said.
In addition to debating fines, the Senate also discussed the technical aspects of enforcing the bill.
“Unless you stand over my shoulder, you have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with this phone,” Plale said. “I could be texting, I could be calling somebody, I could be checking out one of the hundreds of apps that I don’t know how to use on this thing.”
The ambiguity of what constitutes texting prompted some legislators to urge rejection of the bill in favor of concentrating on inattentive driving laws already in place.
But Senate President Fred Risser, D-Madison, pointed out many similar laws rely on an officer’s discretion.
“You don’t have to have the car come to court, you don’t have to bring the broken mirror to court, you just need identification of the vehicle for a ticket to be issued,” Risser said.
The bill will now head back to the Assembly for a third reading and must still be signed by Gov. Jim Doyle before taking effect.
