Georgia legislators are set to push for legislation that would prompt changes to the commutes of many Georgia drivers.
| House Bill 7: Would ban cell phone usage for drivers, except for hands-free calls House Bill 18: Would ban smoking in motor vehicles when a minor is present |
Two pre-filed bills in the Georgia House of Representatives aim to place restrictions on Georgia drivers as the house prepares to enter the 2017-2018 legislative session on Jan. 9.
House Bill 7 (HB 7), pre-filed by state Rep. Keisha Waites, would ban the use of cell phones to make calls while driving other than hands-free calls. House Bill 18 (HB 18), pre-filed by GA Rep. Sandra Scott, would ban smoking inside all motor vehicles when a minor is present in the vehicle.
Waites cited a high number of vehicle fatalities when making the case that HB 7 is needed.
“In 2015 we had 1,427 Georgians that died in automobile accidents,” Waites said. “When you look over the nine-year period of time, we’re going in the wrong direction, our deaths are actually getting higher, they’re increasing.”
Waites said that while she has received 92 e-mails from people expressing their support for the bill, she has also received about a dozen emails from critics of the bill who argue that statistics do not show making hands-free calls is safer than making calls while holding a phone.
“House Bill 7 is not going to be the end all, fix all of this dynamic. I think the issue is that we need to change the culture,” Waites said. “I think that for the 1,400 lives that have been lost in Georgia in 2015 [in auto accidents], I think we owe it to those families to take some type of action to start to reduce the number of fatalities on the road.”
Waites said in the future she would also like to see legislation passed that limits cell phone usage in young beginner drivers.
“What I would tell you that I would like to see is for individuals who are new drivers, around the ages of fifteen or sixteen years of age, that we do limit their complete cell phone usage for those individuals until they’re eighteen. I think that’s more than reasonable,” Waites said.
Rep. Scott also hopes to improve public safety by banning smoking in vehicles when a minor is present through her pre-filed HB 18.
“I’m hoping that parents would think about all of the childhood diseases that their kids are having due to smoking,” Scott said. “That is one of the biggest forefronts of it all, when parents will begin to understand that smoking in an enclosed car is not healthy for the child, as well as for themselves.”
Scott said she hopes that the bill will help decrease the number of minors that begin smoking at a young age.
“We have to educate the parents as to why they shouldn’t be smoking in cars and we’re going to have to let them see what happens to them if they smoke in cars they have their kids in, looking at what happens to their lungs,” Scott said. “We’re moving in the right direction. This is one direction that we need to think about like I said and try to make sure it is passed to try to help kids who cannot help themselves from having to deal with secondhand smoke.”
