Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
Kentuckians who hold their phones while driving could face $100 fines under a bill that cleared a Senate committee Wednesday with bipartisan support.
“It’s probably one of the least restrictive hands-free bills in the country, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Senate Transportation Committee Chair Jimmy Higdon told his colleagues. “It adds Kentucky to the list of states, approximately 30 states across the country, that do not allow you to have a handheld device in your hand and communicate with it (while driving).”
Higdon, a Lebanon Republican, presented the legislation, Senate Bill 28, to the committee Wednesday morning. Higdon is retiring from the legislature at the end of this year, and the bill is one of his priorities.
SB 28, or the “the Phone-Down Kentucky Act,” says drivers cannot hold a cell phone while driving to send electronic messages, like texts and emails, or watch moving images, like videos and games. Fines accessed under the legislation will be divided among a traumatic brain injury trust fund, the Kentucky trauma care system fund and a veterans’ program fund.
While presenting his bill, Higdon spoke of meeting Alyssa Burns, whose daughter Camberleigh died in a 2022 crash after a distracted driver hit their car days before her second birthday. Burns previously spoke in support of Higdon’s bill during the legislative interim.
In a statement last week, Burns said “justice for Camberleigh is represented through this bill and through any legislation that ensures no one has the power to take a life without facing consequences.”
“I know this bill won’t bring Camberleigh back, but in a way, it keeps her name and memory alive,” Burns said. “She is not just a statistic on a piece of paper—she was a little girl with her whole life ahead of her.”
Several committee members expressed support for the legislation.
Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville, who is the vice chairman of the committee and a physician, said that he has “spent a lot of nights in the operating room, helping put people back together who were distracted and who ended up in the operating room” after car accidents.
“I want you to know I really got tired of seeing our sons and daughters in the emergency room, in the operating room, because of the distractions,” Douglas said. “So I appreciate it for that account.
Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said that she has been among lawmakers, including Higdon and a few other committee members, who have been practicing getting in the habit of hands-free driving after hearing that the bill would be debated this session.
“Once you get in the habit of docking your phone when you get in the car, and then you do not touch it again until you get out of the car, it gets easier and easier. It really does,” Berg said while voting in favor of the bill.
Sen. Greg Elkins, R-Winchester, said that he was supportive of the bill, but in some areas, “I think it doesn’t go far enough.” He added that he would like to see the bill explicitly bar drivers from using cell phones while at a stoplight.
“I know probably everybody in this room has sat behind someone at a red light or a stoplight, looking at their phone, and everybody goes on in the other lanes, and you’re sitting there, stuck behind that person. I think that’s a safety issue as well,” Elkins said. “I would hope that maybe we could entertain an amendment or address it at some point in the future.”
Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, said while voting in favor of the current bill, he had opposed previous versions because of it barring the use of phones while at a stoplight. He argued that drivers can signal to other stopped cars that the light is green by sounding their car horn.
“I support it precisely because you can stop and make a call at a green light, unlike last year’s,” Williams said.
The bill now awaits a floor vote in the Senate.
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
