Nevada: Cell phone laws, legislation
Last updated: March 29, 2010 · Print this report
Cell, texting news: The 76th regular session of the Nevada Legislature begins Feb. 7, 2010. There was no session in 2010.
Current prohibitions:
None.
2009 legislation:
SB 136: Would prohibit text messaging while driving on Nevada’s roads. OK’d by the full Senate vote on April 8, 2009, but died in committee in the Assembly. The wording was resurrected in the Senate on the final day of the legislative session and folded into an unrelated motorcycle bill, SB 309.
Legislation notes:
Distracted driving has been cited as the No. 1 cause of fatal traffic accidents in Nevada.
New state Sen. Shirley Breeden, D-Henderson, authored the 2009 texting bill. “I’m not going to give up the fight,” she said after SB 136 was smothered by an Assembly committee.
The text messaging legislation received strong support from law officers in an Assembly hearing on April 23. The fine would be $75 but no points.
“This legislation is not just for children,” she said. “It is for all of us.” Numerous states are banning texting and cell phoning for teenage drivers, and opposition has emerged to the bills because they do not cover adults. Young drivers complain that they are being singled out. Teenagers, by far, are the largest consumers of text messaging services.
The Nevada Senate’s Energy, Infrastructure and Transportation Committee amended and approved the anti-texting and driving bill SB 136 on March 27, 2009.
Breeden’s bill was first considered in the Senate Energy, Infrastructure and Transportation Committee on Feb. 18. The usual enforcement questions were raised. Committee chairman Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, said: “If California can pass (a texting bill) with 36 or 37 million people over there, somehow their law enforcement is working with this new law, so you know, we need to make the same statement.”
A spokesman for the state Office of Traffic Safety said it may not take a position on Breeden’s plan to outlaw text messaging by drivers, or on similar legislation to prohibit the use of cell phones not connected to hands-free devices.
The 2007 legislative session saw only one bill regarding drivers and cell phones: a plan to ban drivers under 18 from using the wireless devices.
Nevada’s regular legislative session began Feb. 2, 2009, and ended June 1.
Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said of cell phone driving legislation: “Knowing our Legislature, it will have a tough time. Nevadans are independent and like their liberties.”
In 2003 Nevada prohibited local governments from regulating cell phones in automobiles.
I am very interested in the cell phone law being passed. This is a subject that hits home closely. My son and his wife were the victims of a car accident as a result of someone talking on their cell phone while driving. Their lives are not the same since the accident.
Virtually without exception, each and every time I drive, it is necessary to dodge vehicles driven recklessly by persons distracted by cell phones – either having them plastered to the sides of their heads or gazing at them while in their hands, with the road being ignored. My well-honed defensive driving skills are all that stand between these impaired drivers and my death – or the deaths of my passenger children and grandchildren. The ages of these people run the gamut, but the vast majority are women in their 20′s and 30′s driving SUVs, most of whom have child restraint seats in their vehicles – often with children in them. This unconscionably dangerous behavior puts not only their defenseless children at great risk of serious injury or death, but society in general. Laws to protect the innocent from persons too stupid and arrogant to conduct themselves responsibly do not fare well in Nevada due to a misguided anti-legislation mindset that perceives laws to protect the rest of us from the dangerous morons in our midst as infringing upon their “liberties.” Studies have shown that cell phone use while driving results in impairment exceeding that of intoxication – and yet we have DUI laws but allow cell phone use. This is not rational. How many people must be maimed or die before the State of Nevada pulls its collective head out of its collective arse?