Senator Patterson asked and was granted unanimous consent to make statements and moved that the statements be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Patterson’s first statement is as follows:
My amendment would simply make this a real law. It would make it a primary enforcement law. To make it a secondary enforcement suggests a great insult, an insult to law enforcement officers everywhere. We really don’t trust you to uphold your oath and to make a legitimate stop and enforce the law, even in what is in a very dangerous situation.
My learned colleague from the 8th District has circulated a letter from Sergeant Christopher Hawkins, legislative liaison for the Department of State Police: “The purpose of traffic enforcement is to identify and stop dangerous driving behaviors before it becomes an accident. By making text messaging while driving a secondary traffic offense, you take away an officer’s ability to be proactive in stopping such obviously distracting behavior before it results in a traffic crash.”
We are suggesting that, in fact, we should turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to what all the studies suggest is dangerous driving behavior. I submit to you that if you really have read the studies, and you are serious about being a legislator, and you are serious about enforcing laws that prevent accidents, we must make this a real law, not just perfume on a pig.
Senator Patterson’s second statement is as follows:
Having been around Lansing for a number of years, the yeas and nays vote was quite telling. I find the Senator from the 4th District argument and opposition to my amendment to be quite interesting—articulate, but obfuscating. We should let the law evolve, kind of like drunk driving. We certainly should not make that a primary offense because, after all, back in the ’70s, three-martini lunches were the norm. Everybody expected to drink and drive, and then MADD came in. The same thing you will notice is happening now. It has evolved in the time that the Senator from the 4th District was a House member; a lot of studies have been conducted. The bill that he had before me back then had nothing to do with texting. We didn’t even know what texting was ten years ago.
However, I find it very interesting and skilled to argue in the alternative as he did. We should not have primary enforcement because we have careless driving, and we have reckless driving. While law enforcement can’t be trusted, they have all sorts of pretext to use in order to pull somebody over for driving while black, which is exactly what his concern is.
We are a country of free men and women, and as the Senator from the 8th District suggested, driving is not a right. It is a privilege, and we have an obligation to provide certain safeguards and standards. We are not alone. The studies have come in, and they are replete. The Department of Transportation bars commercial drivers from texting. If you think that the law-abiding citizens are all going to obey the law if it is a secondary offense, think again.
Here is an interesting article with regard to the most egregious driving tactics by teens who completely, willfully ignore the laws with regard to texting. Either we trust law enforcement or we don’t. We don’t need to argue in the alternative. We need to protect the citizens from those who do not obey the law.
We need to put teeth in this, and as an afterthought, to suggest that this was merely a poison pill, in my mind, is to impugn my motivation which is violative of the Senate Rules. I know the learned gentleman from the 4th District didn’t mean anything by that, but I did catch your point. This is not a poison pill.
Senator Patterson’s third statement is as follows:
I can see where I am going to go back into law practice. I am going to have to start a defense firm. I have in my never nicotine-stained fingers a hand-held communication device. According to this law or this bill that has been arduously worked on for years and years, it says, “or send a text message on a wireless 2-way communication device”—exhibit A—“is located in the person’s hand or in the person’s lap.” However, I am driving my car and I put this little two-way device on my dashboard. It is not in my hand, and it is not in my lap. I am texting up here. It is not illegal. I put it over here on the passenger seat and texting over here; I am looking over here. It is not illegal.
Those are defenses, secondary offense. You will never get a conviction. This is nothing but a charade.