A tragedy in Uvalde County, Texas ought to spur the state’s Legislature to do something it needs to do with utmost urgency.
Here comes my rant.
The Legislature needs to enact a bill that’s pending to ban motorists from doing anything behind the wheel of a motor vehicle that doesn’t involve driving the damn thing.
It needs to ban texting while driving and using a handheld telephone while driving. It needs to send the bill to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk and the governor needs to sign it into law immediately.
Jody Kuchler is a hero in my book. He was driving along a highway near Garner State Park when he witnessed a vehicle swerving dramatically in front of him. He dialed 9-1-1 and pleaded with authorities to “get this guy” off the highway. He told dispatchers he was certain the driver would get himself killed or, worse, kill someone else.
He proved to be tragically prescient.
The pickup truck slammed head-on into a bus carrying members of a Baptist church in New Braunfels. Twelve passengers died at the scene. The driver of the pickup — 20-year-old Jack Dillon Young — admitted to police he was texting while driving.
Would a law have prevented this person from committing this act of sheer idiocy — allegedly? Probably not.
But — dammit to hell! — there needs to be serious penalties attached to someone committing this kind of outrageous behavior.
There have been judges in Texas who have been unafraid to assess creative sentences to people who commit egregious crimes that result in death or serious injury.
My wife today came up with an idea: sentencing the perpetrator to community service — in addition to jail time — that includes speaking to high school students about the dangers of doing what he has done.
This story sickens and saddens me to my core. It also enrages me that the state of Texas hasn’t yet declared texting while driving important enough to make it illegal across our vastĀ state.
I don’t blame the Legislature so much for this failure. The 2011 Legislature placed such a bill on Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. Perry vetoed it for the most stupid reason imaginable: He labeled it a form of government overreach.
I am hoping fervently that Gov. Abbott sees it differently.