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Texting While Driving Is Strictly Prohibited In Kansas

By Joel Hardy

01/22/2014

Kansas Highway Patrol

(KAIR)--It may be tempting to pick up that cell phone and make a quick text while driving on Kansas roads, but doing so may cost you time and money.

Trooper Don Hughes with the Kansas Highway Patrol says the state law on texting while driving is pretty clear. You cannot use a wireless communication device to read, write, type, or send a message. It is permissible to receive an incoming phone call, though you cannot dial a number on your keypad to make an outgoing call.

However, with the complexity of modern cell phones, it can be difficult to establish whether or not a person was texting while driving. Hughes says it is tough to prove and even tougher to prosecute, short of obtaining a subpena for a person's phone records, which can be a lot of work for an attorney.

Hughes adds that state lawmakers are working on legislation that would make proving distracted driving a fair bit easier.

The Kansas Highway Patrol issued 436 tickets and warnings from November 2012 to December 2013 across the state of Kansas for texting while driving. During that period, 2 were issued in Atchison County; 4 in Brown County; and one each in Jackson and Jefferson Counties. None were issued in Nemaha County.

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