Make safety our ultimate destination

Kelly Phillips was a 17-year-old honors student at a suburban Minneapolis high school in September 2007 when she died in a car crash.

Kelly wasn’t killed by a drunk driver. Instead, it was her own friend, the driver of the car, who thought it was more important to adjust her iPod than to keep her eye on the road.

The driver died at the scene, and Kelly died two days later. Kelly’s parents have started a foundation in her memory, and they speak to groups of all ages about the importance of safe driving habits and eliminating driver distractions.

The circumstances of Kelly’s death are all too common.

Crashes caused by distracted driving are not a rarity. According to 2008 estimates, nearly 6,000 people lost their lives, and more than 500,000 were injured in police-reported crashes where at least one form of distracted driving was reported. It’s probable the actual numbers are even higher.

We live in a time of technological marvels. We all know how dependent people have become on sending text messages and e-mails from their cell phones, BlackBerrys and other electronic devices

Unfortunately, a lot of these messages are being written and read while people are driving. In our culture of instant communications, it’s hard for many people to resist the temptation to do it anytime and anywhere.

This is not a problem confined to young drivers. Plenty of adult drivers are doing it, too.  Research even suggests adult drivers distracted by texting are actually worse than teen drivers.

No text message is so urgent or important that it’s worth dying for.

That’s why I am fighting for legislation in the Senate that would encourage states to adopt a ban on texting while driving, like the successful law we enacted in Minnesota two years ago. We were one of the first states in the country to outlaw texting, e-mailing, and Internet surfing while operating a motor vehicle, whether it is in motion or part of traffic.

But drivers in states like South Dakota and North Dakota — states without similar laws on their books — deserve the same protections that drivers in Minnesota enjoy today.

In fact, 22 states do not have a law restricting texting while driving at all.

The Distracted Driving Prevention Act would provide grants to states to help them enact laws prohibiting texting while driving. The Avoiding Life-Endangering and Reckless Texting by Drivers (ALERT) Act would withhold a portion of a state’s highway funding if it fails to enact laws prohibiting this reckless, dangerous behavior.

Federal highway funding was the driving force in motivating states to set a 0.08 blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving.

National legislation on distracted driving also sends a strong message that it is time for a cultural shift on this issue, just as federal legislation signaled a cultural shift on seat belts and drunken driving.

As the former top prosecutor for Minnesota’s largest county, I remember how drunken driving was once treated as little more than a traffic offense. Now, our laws recognize that it’s a crime, a potentially deadly crime.

To keep pace with technological advances, our laws need to do the same for distracted driving.

A steering wheel in the hand of a distracted driver is like playing Russian roulette. The driver is taking chances. If he keeps it up, the odds are going to go against him. And when he loses, he will die, or somebody else will.

We need drivers to remain alert and keep their eyes on the road, both for their own safety and the safety of all us. A nationwide ban on distracted driving would change the rules of the road, put common sense back in the driver’s seat and make safety our final destination.

Sen. Klobuchar is a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.