Can we make it a primary offense now? All these bills mean nothing if police cant pull over motorists while using their phones.

Always good to see lawmakers wasting valuable money and time for silly laws. Maybe they should focus on a bill that doesn't allow you to be distracted while changing the radio station next!!

Texting is reality. Everybody does it. Texting while the vehicle is stopped is a safe way to ensure people don't text while they are driving. Removing this freedom will make people text while the vehicle is in motion more often, since their only legal method of texting on the road will be closed off to them.

You ought not to be reading texts any more than you ought to be writing them while you're driving. Doing so is hazardous to others. (I don't really care if someone is stupid enough to crash his own car and ruin or end his own life - neither I nor the government have a proper role in preventing idiots from hazarding themselves. But when those idiots hazard me, I do care.) However, there's no harm in texting while at a traffic signal, and that part ought to come out. Just be ready to put the phone down immediately when the signal changes.

Wow, way to waste time on a whack-a-mole game. First they required handsfree devices to use a cell phone, then ban the reading of text messages, now reading text messages, next year they can ban posting to twitter, then ban posting to Facebook, then ban sending emails, then ban reading twitter, etc, etc.

Maybe they should just clarify the law (already on the books) against distracted/reckless driving.

COMMENT: Posting to Twitter and Facebook while driving is already against the law. Reading them on a hand-held device would be banned under this bill.

What about GPS systems or on-screen controls in vehicles? A person watching a device for directions or fiddling with a computer-controlled car function is just as distracted as someone texting. If the goal is to stop distracted driving, this stuff should be addressed, too.

Dear Aaron Nocar,
With all the issues facing MD'ers it is hard for me to understand how people can think this is so important. How about making it a law LIKE IT IS IN MOST OTHER STATES rto keep right except to pass. People here seem to be fine sitting in the left lane doing 55 and holding up the whole highway behind them. I love being in NJ or PA and seeing a MD'er getting a ticket for Failure to Keep Right!!!

"Can we make it a primary offense now?"

Soon enough, soon enough!
Incrementalism is the state democrats SOP!

The irony to all this of course is that the number of traffic accidents goes up when these laws are made since now people will hold their phone in their lap to text while driving instead of holding it where they can simultaneously see the road. But facts and politics rarely go together.

My understanding was that texting while driving is already a primary offense (and that non-hands-free phone calls were a secondary offense). Am I mistaken about this?

I love how this is characterized as 'closing a loophole', as if the original lawmakers had no inkling that us crafty law-breakers would text while stopped as a way to circumvent their law. Why was this provision not included when the original law was passed? Is there any basis for the new law? Are there any studies that show that texting while stopped causes accidents?

Michael G., I believe "loophole" refers to the point that writing text messages was banned but reading them was not.