States that have secondary texting and driving laws are making a case for a push; a push to make the offense of texting and driving more serious and easier to enforce by making it a primary offense. Under a secondary texting and driving law, the police or highway patrol must pull a driver over initially for another offense before ticketing the driver for texting and driving. Under a primary texting and driving law, an officer or patrolperson can specifically pull the driver over for texting and driving. The desire to reduce car accidents and car fatalities is behind the effort.

The general enforcement of texting while driving laws is difficult because drivers who text normally hold their phones below the window line. Even if police are able to spot someone texting while behind the wheel, under a secondary texting ban law the driver would have to commit another driving offense like speeding before the officer could pull the car over. Therefore the enforcement of a texting while driving ban is difficult when it is a secondary law.

Enforcement measures and activity from states that have made the transition from secondary texting while driving laws to primary is clear, primary laws lead to driver compliance. For example, texting citations in the state of Washington increased 143 percent over the last six months of 2010 because the state texting while driving ban moved to a primary offense regime. Though the statistics in New Jersey do not separate talking and texting violations, it is likely the state also saw a similar increase in the level of enforcement of its texting ban when the law was made primary. During 2008 when the texting ban was secondary around 1,000 citations were issued each month. Today, law enforcement officials hand out nearly 10,000 texting and talking citations each month.

Source: Buffalonews.com, "Push is on to make messaging while driving a primary offense," Tom Precious, 5/9/11