The Governator has signed a bill that will ban text messaging while driving. The law comes into effect on January 1, 2009. It specifically bans the reading, writing, and sending of text messages while operating a motor vehicle. First time offenders will be fined $20, which will ratchet up to $50 for subsequent offense.

As with most feel-good safety laws to this effect, this law sounds solid on its face, but I foresee a number of issue of actually putting it into effect. The first question has to do with enforcement. How will the Police actually enforce the texting ban? Will it be a primary offense, or a secondary offense (i.e., can you be pulled over specifically for texting, or do you need to be pulled for something else, and then they can cite you for texting). Either way, there is the very real issue of how a police officer can actually tell if you someone is texting or not. Does looking down count as probable cause? Can the officer demand to see your phone and check your texting history without a warrant?

Then there is the “sending” part of the law. Reading and writing text messages I can understand as being problematic, but sending? All you do is press “Send” and then the PHONE deals with everything else. So what part of “sending” a text message exactly is illegal?

I imagine that this law will mostly come into play where someone was texting and then is in an accident, rather than being targeted as a primary offense (short of swerving randomly because you were focused on texting). But even then, there will still be the 4th Amendment issues of search and seizure, and whether an officer requires a warrant.