Texting Ban Road Kill?

It's fairly easy to tell when a bill is about to do a dramatic plunge off a legislative balcony and on to the scrap heap.

Just look for the signs.

Has it been altered so much in an effort to please everyone that it now pleases virtually no one? Are the House and Senate versions 12.7 light years apart? Has its scope been narrowed to apply only to teenagers? Is it on the Capitol cafeteria menu, with a side of mashed potatoes?

In the case of the texting while driving ban, the answer is yes to all of those questions. Time of death, TBA.

The original House bill, though not a law enforcement landmark, tried to make texting while driving illegal and create enhanced punishments for texting cruisers who cause serious accidents.

Then the Senate made it illegal to read texts, e-mails etc. How do you know when a driver is looking down at a radio or at a text? Who cares, the bill is tougher, and that makes it better. Or it makes it a massive overreach that spawns a whole new set of problems. Either way.

On Monday, the House took the tougher Senate bill and transformed it again. Now it bans 16 and 17-year-old drivers from using handheld electronic communication/entertainment devices while driving.

So the House is like, pass this. And the Senate is all like, no, pass this. And then the House is all like, no way, the stupid kids are totally the problem. And then everyone's all like, whatever.

Thank goodness the adults have stepped in to solve this problem.

This  change made everyone happy.

“This is disingenuous,” Rep. Mary Gaskill, D-Ottumwa, said about exempting adult drivers from the ban. “It's totally wrong to do this.”

And the new House bill, approved 55-41, got 9-fewer yes votes than the original House bill, which passed 64-31. Progress.

The bill will go back to the Senate,which will refuse to take the latest change. That sends the measure  to a conference committee. From there, it will be carefully fed into a shredder, in strict accordance with hallowed legislative traditions and recycling guidelines.

Perhaps I'm wrong. It happens. Maybe lawmakers will come to their senses and save the one thing that made sense from the beginning - enhancing fines and penalties in personal injury accidents where texting is found to be a factor.

When it can be proven, texting drivers should pay high fines and lose driving privledges for a long time. It sends a message about the dangers of high-speed texting and doesn't create an enforcement nightmare for police or downward-looking drivers. It applies to everyone, not just people who are too young to vote.

But at this point, with the session slipping away, I'm betting they toss the whole mess and focus on other stuff, like the budget etc. And anyway, most Iowans are all like whatever by now.