Missouri legislature is AWOL. So, it’s up to KC Council to ban texting and driving

When you look at the drivers next to you, they’re often entranced by their smartphones. How unsafe is that — for you and everyone around you?

Consider, too, that as many as 90% of drivers engage their smartphones behind the wheel, according to AT&T.

Yet, when you look at a map of all the states that have banned texting and driving, Missouri remains one of the few stubborn holdouts. Only Missouri and Montana have failed to ban texting while driving for all drivers. Missouri also lags behind the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Kevin McManus doesn’t want to wait for Missouri to be the last.

The Kansas City Councilman’s proposed ordinance to ban texting while driving quickly won unanimous approval Wednesday from the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee. The full council should follow suit.

Distracted driving — texting or surfing the internet is one of the biggest distractions — killed 3,166 in 2017, according to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. In 2018, the Missouri Department of Transportation recorded 79 fatalities and 7,345 injuries in 19,239 distracted-driving crashes.

If so many deaths and so much harm had come from the coronavirus, it would be considered a full-scale public health emergency. Yet the Missouri legislature can’t bring itself to act. Texting-while-driving bills died last year in both chambers, and House bill sponsor state Rep. Greg Razer, a Democrat from Kansas City, expects the same this year.

McManus is right. Kansas City must act unilaterally to save the lives of its residents and visitors.

His ordinance, also sponsored by Mayor Quinton Lucas, doesn’t address texting or surfing by name — state law prevents that at the local level — but would prohibit writing or reading anything other than gauges and instruments. It even forbids checking yourself in the mirror, which is a little vague but certainly represents a distraction.

The $60 first-offense fine, while it matches Kansas’, isn’t as daunting as it should be. A fine that says, “You sure as heck never want to do this again” might be more effective.

Regardless, Missouri lawmakers’ pigheadedness in the matter leaves local officials little choice but to take matters into their own hands — and to try convincing the rest of us to keep our phones out of ours.