Abbott signs texting while driving ban

That’s the good news. The bad news is that being Greg Abbott, he wants to make it worse.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed into law a bill that creates a statewide ban on texting while driving.

The measure, authored by state Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, goes into effect Sept. 1. This is the fourth session in a row Craddick has tried to pass such a ban.

“By enacting this public safety legislation, the governor is saving lives by deterring this dangerous and deadly behavior,” Craddick said in a statement. “For a long time, Texas has needed this law to prevent the loss of life in unnecessary and preventable crashes and we finally have it.”

[…]

The governor announced that he had signed the bill at a press conference Tuesday, when he also announced a series of priorities for a special legislative session to start July 18. Among those priorities is further work on the ban, which Abbott said “did not fully achieve my goals.”

“I was not satisfied with the law as it was written,” Abbott said Tuesday. “Now that Texas does have a statewide ban on texting and driving, I am calling for legislation that fully pre-empts cities and counties from any regulation of mobile devices in vehicles. We don’t need a patchwork quilt of regulations that dictate driving practices in Texas.”

The law includes a provision to pre-empt local ordinances that govern a driver’s ability to “read, write, or send an electronic message.” But Abbott said Tuesday he hopes for broader legislation that fully pre-empts local governments from passing “any regulation of mobile devices in vehicles.” A broader pre-emption measure would impact dozens of cities — including Austin, San Antonio and El Paso — that currently operate under stricter mobile regulations.

And so the war on local control continues apace. Quite a few of the special session agenda items are about adding limits or requirements on what cities can and cannot do. As I saw noted on Facebook, Abbott doesn’t just want to be Governor of Texas, he wants to be Mayor of Texas as well. And you know what? I think we should embrace that and take him seriously. We should all call Greg Abbott’s office every time we see an unfilled pothole, an illegal trash dump, a stray animal, a blinking traffic light, a downed branch blocking a road…you get the idea. If Greg Abbott wants to run the cities’ businesses, then let him have all the responsibility for fixing the cities’ problems. This isn’t a joke, by the way. It’s resistance, and the more of it we can do, the better. Who’s with me on this? The Chron has more.

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