South Carolina has long resisted efforts to outlaw the handheld use of cell phones while driving. Now the state stands to lose federal highway funding. (Stock photo from Westend61 via Getty Images)
COLUMBIA — For more than two decades, South Carolina’s Legislature has resisted efforts to outlaw holding or scrolling on a cellphone while driving.
But now the state stands to lose $40 million to $80 million in annual federal highway funding. That threat could be what finally pushes a “hands-free” measure to passage.
Rep. Bill Taylor began leading the effort in 2018. The Aiken Republican, an avid motorcyclist, had just spent the summer of 2017 on a 3,000-mile road trip with his wife to Canada. On the road, he was hyperaware that many of the drivers around him were distracted by cellphones.
When he returned to South Carolina, he sold the motorcycle and pre-filed his bill, which he dubbed DUI-E: “Driving under the influence of electronics.” He and other advocates warned the distraction was even more dangerous than drunken driving.
“This is not an end-all-be-all, but it is one major distraction we can minimize,” Taylor told the SC Daily Gazette on Wednesday.
Taylor once again introduced legislation ahead of the current session, as did Sen. Tom Young, R-Aiken, and House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope, R-Rock Hill, whose bill has received an initial nod from a House panel. It will likely advance from the full House Judiciary Committee to the chamber floor in the next couple weeks.
“I know we’ve wrestled with this issue over the years,” Pope said when promoting the bill earlier this month.
He proposed the legislation after the widow of a former Rock Hill attorney contacted him. A driver distracted by a cellphone hit and killed Earl Gatlin, age 69, in 2023 while he was riding his bicycle.
Pope said the family was frustrated so little could be done under state law to hold the driver responsible. He trusts the House can reach a compromise and “give victims’ families some comfort.”
Taylor said that’s far from the only tragedy caused by distracted driving in the state.
Warning letter
But it’s a letter from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that has gotten legislators’ attention.
One after another House members commented earlier this month on the need for the bill and the deaths caused by distracted driving statewide. In the next breath, they spoke about the federal funding now at risk.
A 2011 federal rule required states to pass laws banning handheld cellphone use for drivers of commercial vehicles. Under that rule, South Carolina should have had a law in place by 2015.
Five years later, with no law in place, the U.S. Department of Transportation put the state on notice and told officials to make a compliance plan. State officials pointed to Taylor’s bill saying the Legislature was considering measures.
But that bill had already failed twice and would fail again and again, year after year. In 2022, the Senate passed its own version of the legislation but it failed when it came to the floor of the House. Two more years have gone by since then with no movement.
Then late last year a letter came to Gov. Henry McMaster’s office and the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
Put a law in place by July 2025, it said, or the federal government will start docking 4% of funding it sends to the state for road construction. The penalty would go up to 8% every year after that until the law is changed.
“I’m never pleased when the federal government uses extortion to get what it wants. However, in this case, I change my mind,” Taylor said half-jokingly. “Thank God they’re providing a financial nudge in the millions of dollars to get this done.”
After all, the measure has the support of truck drivers in the state who say distracted drivers on the road — weaving in and out of lanes in front of massive big rigs not made to stop on a dime — are one of their biggest safety concerns.
The state chapter of the motorcycle rights group ABATE (which stands for A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments) is also a proponent. Smaller than a car, motorcycles can go unnoticed by a distracted driver and possibly be struck or run off the road.
Taylor also pointed to Georgia, where traffic deaths went down 17% the first year after the law changed. South Carolina has about 1,000 deaths per year on its roadways. If the statistic holds, that could mean 170 fewer lost lives in the Palmetto State annually.
“This is a bill that’s needed in South Carolina,” said Rep. Case Brittain, R-Myrtle Beach “One death is enough for me.”
Under the proposal, drivers caught holding a cellphone in any way — either in their hand or in their lap — could be fined upwards of $100.
It’s already illegal to text while driving in South Carolina. Legislators passed that law in 2014 only because their unwillingness to do anything for years resulted in a hodgepodge of local ordinances statewide, which the law overruled. But that compromise still allowed drivers to hold their phone to talk or use their GPS. It also allows texting while stopped.
Taylor has long argued that toothless law provides offenders so many legal excuses, it’s impossible for officers to enforce. So, they don’t even try.
The advancing proposal would do what he’s proposed for years: Make it illegal for drivers to hold, read or watch videos on their cellphone. Hands-free phone calls and voice-to-text messaging would still be legal. And holding the phone while legally stopped would still be OK.
Severely injuring someone while distracted by a cellphone could mean five years in prison and a $1,000 fine. Causing a death would be a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
All fines collected would go to the state Department of Public Safety to pay for road signs and other educational material urging people not to drive distracted.
SC’s seat belt law
This is not the first time federal highway dollars have motivated legislators to pass a law.
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Transportation dangled an additional $11 million in federal highway funds as an incentive to pass a law allowing police to pull someone over for not wearing a seat belt. State transportation leaders said then the money could go to repair rural roads not previously eligible for federal funding, the Associated Press reported.
Before, police could only ticket adult drivers for a seat belt violation if they pulled over a car for a different violation.
Legislators argued for years over personal liberty and whether police could tell if someone was unbuckled. Some also worried it would give officers an excuse to pull someone over.
“The government is trying to regulate the amount of risk you can take against yourself based on health and insurance costs,” former Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, told the Associated Press. “That puts us on a slippery slope because you are buying into the proposition that government has the right to manage risk for you. And where does that stop?”
The bill passed in 2005, becoming law despite opposition from former Gov. Mark Sanford. Though Sanford refused to sign the legislation, he did not veto it, allowing it to go into effect.