House Speaker Pat Grassley today said it is unlikely the 2021 legislature will vote to make it illegal to drive while handling a smartphone.
Grassley said some of the questions House Republicans have raised haven’t been answered. “Just the enforcement, with law enforcement, how that would all play out,” Grassley during an online news conference. “There’s a lot of members in the (House Republican) Caucus who have a lot of questions of how that actually look in its implementation.”
It is illegal to text while driving in Iowa, but drivers cannot be ticketed for having a cell phone in their hand while driving. The first vehicles to feature hands-free technology for making cell phone calls were introduced in 1999.
Today 26 other states have laws that ban motorists from using cell phones while driving, unless they’re making calls through the software in their dashboard. Back in 2015, Governor Terry Branstad lobbied legislators to pass a law to make it a crime to handle a cell phone while driving, but it failed that year and in every year since.