We say that every seven seconds an angel gets it’s wings.  Did you know though, that about every three hours someone dies from a texting related accident?  Over the past few months, the State House has been revising and negotiating the bill to ban texting while driving.  Yesterday the long debate on whether this bill would happen came to rest.  The House voted 188 to 7 to approve the bill for Pennsylvania.  The bill has to be sent back to the Senate for some language tweaking before moving on to the governor, Tom Corbett.  The process should not take long and once approved by both Pennsylvania will join the 30 other states that have past the texting while driving ban.

Senate Bill 314, states that drivers of all ages are prohibited from using interactive wireless communication devices for reading, writing, or sending text messages while driving.  Many Officials are for this bill including Representative Josh Shapiro.  He has been pushing for this anti-texting bill since the beginning.  He said, “This has been a long time coming.  This will no doubt make our roadways safer.”

With this bill, police will be able to pull over anyone texting without having any other problems. Although they can arrest you for texting, they cannot do it for cell phone use, but they can add it as an offense if a driver is pulled over for another offense.  This ban on texting while driving has a generally favorable review from drivers in Pennsylvania.  Folks from Northern Tier say that it is about time.  While this ban cannot stop drivers from texting while driving, it will hopefully make them think twice before texting and driving.