Freshman Celia Nelson was finishing up a text message to her best friend when she looked up and noticed she was getting

dangerously close to the vehicle in front of her, but she didn’t have time to hit the brakes. Before she knew it, Nelson had rear-ended the vehicle — a Lamborghini.

“When I looked up from my phone, I realized I was already too close to the car in front of me,” Nelson said. “By the time I hit the brakes, it was already too late and I rear-ended them. Needless to say, the foreign couple in the vehicle were furious with me.”

Had Nelson been driving under the proposed House Bill 415 that prohibits message-based communication on cell phones while driving, she would have been guilty of a minor misdemeanor.

House Bill 415, which would prohibit driving a vehicle while using an electronic communications device to write, send or read text-based communication, was passed by an 86-12 vote in the Ohio House on March 24. The bill entered the Ohio Senate on March 25, where it is being considered.

Nelson said she still finds herself texting while driving at times but tries not to.

“Every once in a while I find myself texting while driving and think to myself, ‘Is this worth it?'” she said. “Since the answer to that is ‘no’, I usually put the phone down and wait until I’ve stopped to text someone.”

The bill would make texting while driving a primary offense, meaning a police officer could pull over a motorist for that reason alone. The law would carry a $150 fine for a first offense after a six-month grace period, according to the bill summary from ohiolegislature.com.

The grace period is for drivers to be familiar with not using their cell phones for text-based communication and for law enforcement to observe the operators of motor vehicles committing a violation of the law.

H.B. 415 establishes certain exemptions to the law.

“A person using an electronic communications device for emergency purposes and a person driving a public safety vehicle who uses such a device in the course of the person’s duties will not be held liable,” the bill states.

Electronic communications devices include wireless telephones, text-messaging devices, personal digital assistants, computers or any other substantially similar wireless devices designed or used to communicate text, according to the bill summary.

If H.B. 415 passes, Ohio will be the 20th state with laws forbidding certain cell phone use while driving.

Sophomore Alec Fehrenbach said he is indifferent about having a law that bans text messaging while driving.

“I think it’s a law [that] will keep people safer. However, there are dozens of things that people can do while driving that are just as distracting,” he said. “I mean, searching for CDs in your car, among other things, playing around with a navigation system or eating are all distracting, but you don’t see any laws going into place about those.”

State Representative Nancy Garland (D) from New Albany is a sponsor of the bill, along with Michael DeBose, (D) from Cleveland. Garland said lawmakers in the Senate acknowledge that people do a number of distracting things while driving, such as eating and talking on a cell phone, according to a March press release.

“The bottom line is we’re trying to not have people texting while they’re driving,” she said.

Lawmakers have been looking at statistics of texting and driving, such as a recent study done by the University of Utah, which found drivers who texted while in a simulator had more crashes, responded more slowly to brake lights and displayed less control than drivers who talked on a cell phone, the release stated.

“It’s really dangerous,” Garland said. “If they know it’s against the law to do it, it’s going to stop a lot of people.”

Garland said the legislation presents the best solution to curbing the dangerous practice of text messaging while driving.

“As a result of thorough analysis and input from interested parties and through a learning process, we have crafted legislation that ensures the safety of Ohio’s drivers,” she said.

Junior Joe Laycock firmly believes a law that prohibits text messaging while driving is something that could keep every driver in Ohio safer.

“Texting is really distracting and dangerous while you are operating a vehicle that could easily kill you or someone else,” he said.