Max Herrick pulled over on the interstate near Harrisonville, Missouri, on a spring night in 2020 to supply antifreeze to a lady whose automotive had overheated.

He had lost a grandson to an overdose just hours before, but aiding stranded motorists was second nature to the 73-year-old retired school custodian, who remembered 1000’s of scholars’ names and repeatedly brought food pantry donations to a retirement community. “He all the time was there to assist people,” said his son Bobby Herrick, who was within the automotive with him that night.

Just moments later, a truck driver attempting to text his wife an image of the hand sanitizer he had purchased swerved onto the shoulder and plowed into the vehicles, based on court and crash records. While the truck driver was not injured and the girl and Bobby Herrick recovered from their injuries, Max Herrick became certainly one of not less than 382 individuals who died in Missouri crashes involving a distracted driver from 2017 through 2021, based on the Missouri Coalition for Roadway Safety.

Despite such tragedies, Missouri is certainly one of two states — the opposite is Montana — that don’t prohibit all drivers from text messaging while operating vehicles. (Missouri has such a law for people 21 and under.)

Before this yr, Missouri state lawmakers from each parties had proposed greater than 80 bills since 2010 with various levels of restrictions on cellphone use and driving. Similar laws has been proposed in Montana, too. In each states, such bills have faltered, largely because Republican opponents say they do not think the laws work and are only one other infringement on people’s civil liberties.

Nevertheless, Missouri Republicans and Democrats introduced not less than seven bills this session concerning hand-held phone use while driving — and road safety advocates think such laws has a greater probability of passing this yr. Montana, meanwhile, has a bill in search of to dam localities’ distracted driving laws.

“I’m from the party that desires to attenuate the quantity of laws — and I agree — but you bought to be smart about it,” said Jeff Porter, a Republican and former Missouri state representative who proposed laws thrice to limit hand-held cellphone use. “There are literally laws which might be needed to try to offer awareness and save unnecessary deaths.”

Supporters of hands-free driving laws concede that distracted driving restrictions are usually not a panacea for all traffic fatalities. And even when Missouri passes additional restrictions on cellphone use, small nuances in wording could influence whether such a law is effective.

Nationwide, about 3,000 people typically die in distracted driving crashes annually, based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, though researchers suggest that is an undercount. While hands-free options are actually standard for brand spanking new vehicles, the variety of distracted driving deaths has stayed relatively regular. They represented not less than 1 in 12 traffic fatalities in 2020.

Distracted driving laws reduce fatalities — if, just like the ones established in 24 states, they ban all hand-held cellphone use reasonably than banning only a selected activity reminiscent of texting, based on the Governors Highway Safety Association and a study published in 2021 within the journal Epidemiology. Banning texting alone doesn’t make a difference, those researchers found.

Oregon and Washington saw significant reductions within the rates of monthly rear-end crashes after they broadened their laws to ban “holding” a cellphone as compared with states that banned only texting, based on a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Those two states also prohibited holding a phone when stopped temporarily — say, at a red light.

“For those who tell a driver that they’re breaking the law just by holding the phone of their hand, a police officer who’s attempting to implement that law doesn’t have to come to a decision whether or not the motive force is texting,” said Ian Reagan, a senior research scientist on the Insurance Institute.

In contrast, California broadened its texting bans to ban “holding and using” a phone but didn’t specify whether that ban applied to a driver stopped temporarily. It didn’t see a major reduction in rear-end crashes, which the researchers said are a more telling metric than the often-underreported crashes attributed to distracted driving.

Regardless of the cause, traffic fatalities have soared for the reason that pandemic began. Among the many 10 states with the best rates of deaths from fatal motorcar crashes in 2020, based on the Insurance Institute, just one, Tennessee, had a ban on hand-held phone use for all drivers on the time. Among the many 10 states with the bottom rates of such fatalities, all but Utah had a hand-held ban for all drivers.

Montana ranked fifth-highest, and Missouri got here in at No. 12.

Adrienne Siddens lost her husband, Randall, who was working at a Columbia, Missouri, triathlon in 2019, because a lady using her cellphone to video chat was driving 18 mph over the speed limit and never listening to cars stopped at a red light. The driving force swerved and entered a lane that was closed for the race, based on court records.

The lady hit two pedestrians, including Randall, who flew greater than 127 feet. He spent most of the following six months on life support before dying.

“I now should raise our three beautiful babies alone,” Adrienne Siddens, who was pregnant with their third child when the crash occurred, testified in a March 2022 hearing on Porter’s bill. “Together with your help, passing this laws and enforcing a hands-free policy, so many other families is not going to should experience this grief.”

Republicans referred the laws to the state House’s Downsizing State Government Committee. The bill died.

State Rep. Tony Lovasco, a Republican who served on the committee, told KHN he’s concerned that either law enforcement could use a ban to stop people randomly or they might have difficulty enforcing it.

“I’m very hesitant to adopt a prohibition on a specific type of distraction, versus simply enforcing the traffic laws and ensuring that individuals aren’t weaving out and in of lanes,” said Lovasco.

In Montana, Republicans reminiscent of state Sen. Jeremy Trebas not only don’t support a statewide ban, but in addition they wish to overrule Missoula and the 14 other Montana cities, towns, and tribal governments which have enacted bans on hand-held cellphone use while driving.

“These laws are going to make the roads more dangerous because persons are just going to cover it and put the phone lower of their automotive as an alternative of keeping their phone up and their eyes up,” said Trebas, who drafted laws this yr that may prevent local governments from enacting such ordinances. Trebas described his evidence to support that assertion as “mostly anecdotal.”

John MacDonald, a former lobbyist for Missoula, opposed the same bill by Trebas that failed in 2017. MacDonald ascribed resistance to a statewide ban to the identical forces that made Montana the last state to ascertain a numerical speed limit; its limit was “reasonable and prudent” until 1999.

“It’s something ingrained in Montana that our vehicle is type of an extension of our home, and the federal government mustn’t be dictating to us how we will behave in that vehicle,” said MacDonald.

A law like Trebas’ proposal already exists in Missouri: Even when a Missouri municipality establishes a ban on texting and driving, because the St. Louis suburb Kirkwood did in 2014, it isn’t enforceable since the state says its law supersedes local ordinances.

Angela Nelson, AAA Missouri’s vp of public affairs and government relations, said her group’s past education on the perils of distracted driving has helped position recent statewide proposals to pass this yr. The group, a part of a coalition that goals to curb distracted driving accidents, endorsed laws from two Republicans that restricts holding an electronic communication device, in addition to using one, while driving. Other Republican legislators introduced a measure to only expand the texting ban to all drivers, no matter age. AAA has not taken a position on that one.

Lovasco, though, said it was too early to predict whether any will pass.

Siddens, who has advocated for such bills since she lost her husband, stays optimistic that Missouri lawmakers will pass a tougher law after hearing in regards to the tragedies for thus a few years. “Sooner or later, they’ll do something about it,” she said. “They’ll should.”