Dear Friend:

Last week, I spoke on the House floor in favor of a strong distracted driving bill.

On two occasions in recent months, the House passed legislation to ban texting and talking on hand-held cell phones while driving for adults and all cell phone use for teens, and would make these a primary offense — meaning the police could pull over a driver violating these provisions before an accident occurs. Additionally, these bills contain important teen safety measures like increased driver’s education requirements, limiting the number of passengers a new teen driver can transport, and requiring seatbelts to be worn by all passengers.

The Senate amended our bills and returned to the House a watered-down, weak bill that among other things, eliminates the teen driver provisions, contains no ban on adult texting while driving and makes enforcement a secondary offense for teens, which means that a violator could only be fined after an accident has already occurred.

The Senate version of the bill is nothing more than window-dressing that won’t stop a single accident or save a single life.

On the House floor, I asked my colleagues to reject the Senate version in order to set up a bipartisan, joint House-Senate conference committee where we could reach some consensus to strengthen the distracted driving legislation. By a solid bipartisan vote, the House rejected the Senate version, setting the stage for a compromise bill to be passed in the fall.

I need your help to ensure we ultimately end up with a strong bill. The public has done a great job of driving this issue. From Oprah to constituents across the state, thousands have weighed in to support a strong distracted driver law in Pennsylvania that will save lives. So please take a moment to sign our online petition expressing your support for our efforts.

As always, I welcome your feedback.

All the best,

Rep. Josh Shapiro