A new state law that bans texting while driving took effect Jan. 1, but officials admit enforcement may be a problem.

Signed by Governor Pat Quinn in August, the texting ban outlaws operating a motor vehicle “while using an electronic communication device to compose, send, or read an electronic message.”

Mike Stout, director of the traffic safety division of the Illinois Department of Transportation, told reporters in mid- December that the texting ban will cut down on fatal car crashes by addressing distracted driving.

“Just imagine that you’re driving down any busy road in Illinois, and I ask you to close your eyes for just a few seconds,” Stout hypothesized. “You’d be amazed at what can happen in two seconds with your eyes off of the road.”

But with the advent of navigation software and music players on phones, text messaging is only one distraction arising from cell phone usage in cars. That fact may be a challenge for police trying to enforce the texting ban.

Springfield attorney Randy Cox says it will be difficult for police to tell the difference between a driver texting and one looking up directions on a GPS-enabled phone.

“I think it will be ultimately difficult to prove,” Cox says. “It’s going to be based in great part on circumstantial evidence.”

A driver’s cell phone records would provide definite proof of texting, Cox says, but obtaining phone records would require a court order that may not be worth the trouble for a traffic violation that doesn’t even amount to a misdemeanor.

Stout says most texting tickets will probably result from crashes, but even that may prove challenging.

“Police don’t have time every time they go to a crash to check the phone records of the person driving,” he says.

Investigator Corey Coffrin with the Secretary of State Police says police will simply have to learn the law.

“I think if an officer comes up alongside a vehicle, and there’s a cell phone out, and there’s movement that would indicate texting, obviously that’s something we would look at,” Coffrin says. “You’d be surprised at how much we can see into a vehicle.”

Stout says it is unclear how much safer roads will become under the texting ban.

“We don’t have good numbers. We do know that out of half a million crashes, about 1,600 of those crashes reported they were on a cell phone,” Stout says. “On the crash report form, there is a box where the (police) officer can check that (the driver) was on a cell phone. It’s doubtful that many motorists in a crash will say, ‘Hey, I was on a cell phone. Please mark that box,’ for obvious reasons.”

The law makes texting while driving a primary offense, meaning police can stop motorists without another reason, such as speeding or not wearing a seatbelt. It will be treated as a moving violation, carrying a $75 fine for the first offense.

Exceptions to the law allow drivers to text when stopped in traffic with their vehicle in park or neutral and while reporting an emergency to police. The law specifically excludes police from the ban, as well as commercial drivers using devices installed permanently in the vehicle.

A separate but related law passed at the same time makes it illegal to talk on a cell phone in a construction zone or school zone. That law also took effect Jan. 1. Both laws exclude drivers using cell phones with hands-free headsets.

In early January, IDOT announced Illinois saw fewer than 1,000 traffic-related deaths in 2009 for the first time since 1921.

Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].