EDITORIAL: Ban wireless, make roads safer
The Daily Advertiser (excerpt)

This session, Louisiana lawmakers will deal with at least two proposed laws designed to reduce the number of people who drive while talking on a handheld phone or while texting. Most of us, we think, would assume that the act of typing with a thumb or finding a phone and the right button to push to answer a call would, inevitably, make drivers more likely to cause accidents. Oddly enough, the statistics are, at best, murky on the subject. Yet we think a little caution, in a state where too little caution is exercised in traffic or in traffic legislation, would serve the state well.

Despite all the controversy surrounding distracted drivers, few states have launched any sort of all-out legislative crusade against handheld phone use or texting by drivers. Only six states, according to the Governors Highway Safety Administration, ban handheld use for all drivers all the time. And one of those — Washington — makes the offense a secondary one, which means driver's can't be ticketed in the absence of some other offense.

States are tougher on texting. Nineteen states prohibit the practice while driving, although four of them — including Louisiana — enforce the texting ban only as a secondary offense. But we are one of 17 states that ban handheld phone use generally for school-bus drivers, and as a primary offense.