Those of us who have long argued against specific bans on texting while driving have hinged our logic on various concepts, mostly the nightmare of enforcement.

Can an officer tell if someone is texting or just glancing at GPS or even checking the time? Should a ban extend to those behaviors as well? And these questions arise before anyone makes a point about the state seeking to micromanage additional layers of driver behavior.

These are all worthy parts of the conversation, but they are now placed in the direct path of one of the most powerful forces that can arise in any debate: an enormously emotional event that causes hearts to overflow, flooding away countless philosophical bullet points.

Thirteen people are dead in a South Texas church bus crash because of one driver’s decision to text while zooming down a highway. A motorist behind the speeding, weaving pickup called 911 to alert authorities and then watched as the 20-year-old plowed into the bus filled with seniors from First Baptist Church in New Braunfels.

The witness rushed to the pickup and the bus in time to hear the pickup driver cry out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was texting.”

It is the kind of thing that can make countless people call for a texting ban immediately. The logic of the pained heart says: If we can save lives, let’s do it.

I am not immune. Unlike gun grabbers who argue for second amendment incursions as though they would actually save lives, texting-ban advocates are probably right. By definition, we get less of the behaviors we outlaw.

So do the benefits of a texting ban simply outweigh the arguments against it? Shall we just wave aside the arguments about liberty and problematic enforcement and pass a ban in the hope that we see far fewer accidents like this? The appeal is understandable. Haven’t we all dodged the occasional idiots with their faces in their screens on our streets and highways every day?

Thankfully, there is a better idea.

Texting while driving is prevalent because we have not attached proper consequences to its dangerous results. Rather than craft an unfathomable list of things we can and cannot do with our devices, and rather than saddle police with the absurd burden of clairvoyance, we should affix a solution to the actual problem of hazardous behavior by texting drivers.

We already have penalties for reckless and negligent driving. Police actually can discern if texting was the cause of a crash; when that happens, penalties need to be immediate and severe.

An annoying ticket is not as likely to dissuade this habit as seeing a litany of jail terms handed out to people stupid enough to willfully endanger fellow drivers. If we get serious about penalties for the actual damage caused by texting and driving, we send a resonant message without the drawbacks of the various bills that have meandered through the Texas Legislature.

This will be challenging, in the same way that it is hard to get serious about drunken driving. In both cases, lawmakers are hesitant to stigmatize behaviors that many of them are guilty of, and if not them, scads of their constituents.

A tragedy does not turn a bad idea into a good idea. Our grief over the bus crash should not compel bad lawmaking, especially when there is a better solution at hand — if we have the courage to enact it.


By Mark Davis

Mark Davis is a radio host in North Texas and a frequent columnist for The Dallas Morning News. -- Ed.

(Tribune Content Agency)