Law on texting and driving is too lenient, unevenly enforced

When a family supports lenien- cy for an inattentive driver who caused someone’s death, the judge listens. And when a family asks that another inattentive driver be given the maximum, another judge just can’t find the judicial gumption to pronounce a jail sentence beyond a month and a half.

It is a tragedy that two people died, one because a young woman was chatting on her cell- phone and ran a red light, slamming into an approaching car, while another was too busy text-ing on her phone to see that she was about to run down a man out for his morning walk. But it compounds the tragedy that Ohio jurisprudence is haphazard at best in dealing with motorists who put their own selfish pleasure over the right of someone else to live.

Even the state’s recent recognition that text-ing while driving should be specifically against the law falls far short of what is needed to discourage the reckless behavior of texting and driving. And reckless is the key word in that sentence.

If state law treated the irresponsibility of text-ing while driving with the same seriousness as drinking while driving when someone dies in an accident, drivers would be defined as reckless, not merely negligent, and would face felony charges that could result in serious prison time.

Instead, this week in Struthers Municipal Court, visiting Judge Barbara Watson sentenced Whitney Yaeger, 22, of Springfield Township to 180 days in jail, suspending all but 45 days, for mowing down David Muslovski, 55, of Springfield Township as he was walking near his home June 17, 2010. Yaeger will be on three years of probation, have to get mental health counseling, will pay a $900 fine and perform 200 hours of community service.

A small improvement

The only consolation Muslovski’s family has is that the accident galvanized them into pushing for a texting-while-driving bill which, as weak as it is, is better than nothing and was signed a few months ago by Gov. John Kasich.

Samantha Yoder, a 21-year-old Youngstown State University student whose car struck that of Elaine Welsh, 79, at Fifth and Rayen avenues Feb. 14, received no jail time from Judge Robert Douglas of Youngstown Municipal Court. Welsh was seriously injured and her daughter, Susan, 45, was killed, but in an extraordinary gesture, the Welsh family supported Yoder’s sentence of five years probation, a five-year license suspension and 250 hours of community service.

But as much as courts have been inclined to defer to victim-impact statements (with the exception of the Yaeger case), society has a stake in court cases that should be given at least as much weight as the immediate victims.

These cases are, after all, the State of Ohio vs. Yeager and the State of Ohio vs. Yoder. The families’ names would properly appear on any civil case that might be filed as a result of these “accidents.”

Perhaps when these young women perform their community service projects, they will be able to properly convey to their young audiences the pain their recklessness caused to the Muslovski and Welsh families. Perhaps.

But we’re still convinced that Ohio missed a chance to convey that seriousness by law. Legislators could have made it mandatory for a prosecutor to charge the driver in a fatal cell-phone accident with felony vehicular homicide. That message would not have been subject to misinterpretation by anyone.