Apologies for holding back on this for a few hours, as I have been waiting to see if any of our five bills that have survived to Crossover have been assigned to Committees yet, but only two have — SB1154, carried by Sen. Black of Leesburg and SB1768, carried by Sen. Mason of Williamsburg, both of which have been assigned to House Transportation, SubComm1, our favorite venue, probably next Tuesday at 7:00 a.m.
SB1154 is sort of a watered down DUE CARE bill which requires the driver to give full time and attention to the safe operation of the vehicle and exercise due care and decrease speed as necessary to avoid a collision with any person, vehicle or other conveyance, with failure to do so being a traffic infraction.
Sen. Mason’s SB1768 increases the penalty for using a handheld personal communication device in a WORK ZONE to a Class I Misdemeanor
Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sen. Surovell’s SB1550, the Vulnerable User bill we have been following more closely than these other two bills, also get assigned to House Trans Sub 1, where it could join these other two on the same docket.
The top two bills sailed through the Senate without much in the way of problems, while you might recall that Surovell’s 1550 was the one that initially failed 6-6 in Senate Trans with Sen. DeSteph absent, only to squeak through 7-6 after he asked to have his aye vote counted later.
Although they didn’t receive that much coverage in the media, the two Distracted Driving bills that would ban the use of handheld personal communication devices by drivers House Bill 1811/Collins and Senate Bill1341/Stuart, after both gave us some concern by being Passed by for the day on Monday, were passed by their respective houses comfortably on Tuesday, 69-27 and 34-6 and have not yet been assigned to committees in the other house .
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