State Takes Hands-Off Policy on Cellphones

The governor's office said Thursday that the signing will take place in Oakland, ending a five-year campaign by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) to outlaw one of the most common distractions of California drivers.

Under the law, which will take effect in July 2008, Californians risk a minimum $20 fine for driving while yakking into a phone -- unless they are using a headset, speaker phone, ear bud or some other technology that frees both hands while they talk. Drivers in emergency situations would be exempt.

"Public safety is the governor's No. 1 priority," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson, "and this bill will make the streets and highways of California safer by ensuring that drivers have both hands available for driving."

The bill passed both legislative bodies in late August -- the Assembly 50-28, and the Senate 21-16. In both houses, the measure passed with largely Democratic support and the votes of a few Republicans.

Although 38 state legislatures considered bills to minimize driving distractions such as cellphones this year, only New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and the District of Columbia have banned drivers from using hand-held cellphones.

It took Simitian five attempts to get enough support in the Legislature to pass the bill, but Schwarzenegger warmed to the idea quickly.

In a July online interview in which a reporter asked questions solicited from the public, the governor said he had warned his 16-year-old daughter that she would lose her driving privileges if he caught her driving with her cellphone in her hands.

"I sometimes follow her to make sure that she doesn't make that mistake. If she makes that mistake, then I will take the car away from her, and she will drive with the bus, because it's inexcusable."

Though the only official opponent of the bill was the Sprint-Nextel cellular phone company, several lawmakers argued that the act of conversing -- not of holding a phone -- is the real distraction to drivers.

They also argued that children, the radio, pets, hamburgers and sodas are all as likely to divert drivers' attention as cellphones.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the bill, SB1613, as "nanny government."