RALEIGH, N.C.  – Lawmakers want more North Carolina motorists to stop mashing their cell phone keypads while mashing on the gas.

The Senate gave final approval Tuesday to legislation that would ban drivers from text messaging or sending e-mails with their cell phones. The House already has approved the measure, so it now goes to Gov. Beverly Perdue, who will be asked to sign the bill into law.

North Carolina would become the latest state to bar the practice as a way to reduce driver distraction and deadly accidents because they aren’t paying attention while on the road.

Someone caught violating the law could face a $100 fine plus court costs. Drivers younger than 18 already were barred from the practice and can’t talk on their cell phones, either.

RALEIGH, N.C. – The North Carolina House has a message to drivers: keep your fingers on the wheel instead of your cell phone keys.

The House tentatively agreed Wednesday to legislation that would ban drivers from text messaging or sending e-mails with their cell phones.

Scotland County Rep. Garland Pierce said the ban is about keeping the road safe by discouraging distractions. Violators could face a $100 fine plus court costs.

The bill builds on a 2006 law making it illegal for young drivers to talk on a cell phone.

Pierce acknowledged it would be difficult for police to tell the difference between texters and an adult dialing a number to make a call.

The bill was approved by a vote of 108-9. A final House vote could come Thursday.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – Motorists could no longer create text messages while behind the wheel in North Carolina in legislation that passed a house committee Tuesday.

The State House Judiciary III Committee approved the ban on texting while driving (HB 9). It now goes back to the entire House for consideration.

Lawmakers and safety advocates argue texting is another distraction that can lead to accidents and injuries.

The ban would bar anyone operating a motor vehicle from reading or sending e-mail or text messages. There would be some exceptions for emergency responders. It also wouldn’t apply to people who use voice-activated technology, access global navigation systems or are simply looking up a number on their cell phones to call.

Violators would be guilty of an infraction, punishable by up to a $100 fine.

Congressman Brad Miller will host a roundtable discussion about stem cell research in Raleigh this week.

President Obama’s lifting of a more than eight-year ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research gives new hope to people suffering from debilitating or potentially debilitating diseases, according to a statement released from Miller’s office Monday. 

From his release:

“The Congressman will be talking to research experts, advocates and families about their ideas and concerns as research moves forward once again. Miller has been a strong advocate for scientists who want to do their jobs, free from political influence.

“As Chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee on the House Science Committee, he has held hearings on the manipulation, suppression and distortion of research. He values the thoughts and insights of those invited to the roundtable as it relates to embryonic stem cell research and/or other important medical research.”

Roundtable participants include: Elaine Abrams, widow of Dr. Murray Abrams who died from ALS; David Gerber, Division of Transplantation Chief, Department of Surgery, UNC; N.C. Rep. Jim Gulley, Parkinson’s patient; Reece Jenkins, Parkinson’s Action Network; Cindy Heydary, Juvenile Diabetes; Nancy Shulby, Raleigh area parent of diabetic child; Mike Conrad, Piedmont Triad Chapter Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; Barbara and Stuart Teichman, Hadassah; Abby Carter, Easter Chapter MS Society; and others

The roundtable will take place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Rex Hospital, Executive Board Room, 4420 Lake Boone Trail, Raleigh.

A majority of North Carolinians favor laws to ban cell phone use while driving, even though more than half of mobile phone users report doing this regularly, according to the latest Elon University Poll. Respondents to the poll also supported a statewide ban on smoking in public places. The poll, conducted Feb. 22-26, surveyed 758 North Carolina residents and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. 

Driving and cell phones
Cell phones are ubiquitous; 88 percent of the people surveyed own one. Eighty percent of residents believe the use of cell phones while driving decreases highway safety, but at the same time 54 percent of those cell phone users use a phone while they’re behind the wheel. Of the people who drive while on the phone, 56 percent do not use a hands-free device. Two out of three (65 percent) people say driving while on the phone should be illegal except in the case of an emergency.

“Though they recognize that it is dangerous and confess to doing it, citizens apparently won’t stop driving and talking unless a change in the law forces them to do so,” said Hunter Bacot, director of the Elon University Poll.

Anti-smoking laws
The poll asked respondents a series of questions related to laws that limit smoking in public places and the workplace. Eighty-seven percent agreed that employees have the right to work in a smoke-free environment and 82 percent believe that second-hand smoke is a health threat. A strong majority support local or state laws that ban smoking in all public places, including public buildings, offices, restaurants and bars. Seventy percent support local laws and 67 percent support state laws.

But when asked specifically whether all restaurants and bars should ban smoking, only 51 percent were in favor. And for all places of business, respondents expressed a preference for business action, over government regulation. Sixty-one percent said it should be the individual business owner, not the government, who decides whether smoking should be allowed in a place of business. But 63 percent of those people also believed that business owners have a responsibility to provide a smoke-free workplace.

“As the health implications of tobacco become more salient among citizens, support for anti-smoking policies continues to intensify,” noted Bacot. “I suspect this may be the year that we see North Carolina go smokeless,” Bacot said.

Other issues: Transportation
While 51 percent of North Carolinians oppose collecting tolls to fund statewide transportation projects, 77 percent would like to see commuter railways developed in urban areas and 69 percent of citizens support regional rail systems. Sixty-seven percent of respondents support a state-wide bond referendum to raise money for transportation projects, while 57 percent of residents support giving local governments the option of using a half-cent sales tax to finance local projects. Residents oppose a fee based on the number of miles they drive annually (74%) and increasing the cost of the driver’s license renewal fee (55%).

Other issues: Death penalty
When surveyed about their opinions on the death penalty, residents gravitated toward options other than execution. In an open-ended question about the most appropriate punishment for first-degree murder, 48 percent of respondents identified the death penalty as the most appropriate punishment, while 39 percent reported life in prison a more fitting punishment. Across two questions asking about punishments for people found guilty of first-degree murder, 72 percent of North Carolinians supported life in prison without the possibility of parole and, in a separate question, 58 percent of respondents indicated that they supported the death penalty. When queried about the current moratorium on executions in North Carolina, residents were mixed in their evaluations as 45 percent disagreed with the death penalty moratorium, while 47 percent of North Carolinians agreed with the moratorium.

Other issues: Annexation
Though 41 percent of residents opposed the issue of annexation, indicating they disagreed or strongly disagreed with city councils expanding their city limits by bringing in nearby areas or residents, a similar number (40%) had not given the annexation process much consideration. On questions about whether there should be a waiting period for annexation and to gauge support for citizen initiation of the annexation process, there was similar lack of familiarity as nearly 40 percent of people had not given the process much consideration.
In regard to other statewide issues:
Healthcare:
56 percent support a national health insurance plan
52 percent are satisfied with their current healthcare
50 percent prefer a universal health insurance program
 
Oil Drilling:
66 percent support drilling for oil off the North Carolina coast

RALEIGH, N.C. – A bill that would ban nearly every driver from talking on hand-held cell phones in North Carolina has stalled in a committee.

The Senate Commerce Committee considered the bill Tuesday and approved amendments that watered down the measure. No final vote was taken.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Charlie Dannelly of Mecklenburg County, got a similar bill through a committee two years ago but it went no further. Dannelly said it may be different this year because some senators opposed to the idea have changed their minds.

The approved amendments would exempt drivers who call immediate family members, presumably in an emergency. The ban also wouldn’t apply to handsfree phones.

A committee vote could come next week.

The N&O reports that the General Assembly is looking to stop drivers from text messaging.

Could the oh-so-close presidential polls be skewed because they don’t account for many young voters who use cell phones only?

“That’s the biggest bunch of horse . . . I’ve ever heard,” says pollster Brad Coker, who operates the widely used Mason-Dixon Opinion Research poll.

About six weeks before the presidential election, most polls in Virginia give one candidate or the other an edge of 2 to 4 percentage points.

Some supporters of Sen. Barack Obama, puzzled by why he can’t mount a big lead over Sen. John McCain in a difficult environment for Republicans, say the pollsters are missing younger, pro-Obama voters who have cell phones only.

Even some pollsters raise another uncertainty about the plethora of Virginia polls — whether all of the respondents who say they back Obama will vote in November for the nation’s first black major-party nominee.

Nearly 250,000 first-time voters have registered in Virginia this year, and 42 percent are under the age of 25. The overall gain has pushed Virginia’s voter rolls to 4.8 million people.

Coker said if the sample for a poll includes the number of young voters in proportion to the population, the absence of cell-phone users doesn’t matter. He said exit polls taken during the 2004 presidential election showed no difference in voting behavior between landline and cell-phone users.

Polls are weighted to match the demographic composition of the electorate, Coker said.

The Pew Research Center’s Scott Keeter, a former pollster at Virginia Commonwealth University, found that cell-only respondents are significantly more likely to support Obama. But he said they also are substantially less likely to be registered to vote and, if registered, less likely to go to the polls.

A Pew survey in June found that Obama held a 48 percent to 40 percent advantage over McCain among cell-phone users and a 46 percent to 41 percent advantage among landline users.

The Gallup organization, one of the oldest and most respected polls, says it does account for cell-phone users. About 15 percent of households now use cell phones only.

Residents of those households tend to be younger, more minorities and more transient, the Gallup organization’s Web site says.

Those would be more likely to be Obama supporters.

Since Jan. 2, Gallup has been including cell phone-only households in all of its telephone surveys, the Web site says. The most recent national Gallup poll, taken Friday, shows Obama leading by 5 percentage points.
Coker said the Obama campaign should be more worried about the so-called “Wilder effect” or “Bradley effect.”

The phenomenon was named for Virginia’s L. Douglas Wilder and California’s Tom Bradley, black office holders who saw substantial poll leads disappear on Election Day. This resulted in a theory that some voters are embarrassed to tell pollsters that they will not support a black candidate.

In 1982, Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, led in the polls but lost California’s election for governor.

Two days before Virginia’s 1989 election for governor, Wilder led his Republican opponent, J. Marshall Coleman, by 15 percentage points, according to one poll. Wilder won the election, but it was so close there was a recount.

In an interview last week, Wilder, now Richmond’s mayor and an Obama backer, said the public polls were wrong in 1989. Wilder said his own campaign’s internal polling showed the contest was much closer.

He said he expects only minor slippage for Obama, “de minimus” in Wilder’s words.

If there is slippage, it would be among independents, who already are more reluctant than partisans to tell their views, Coker said.

Quentin Kidd, who directs a poll at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, said many pollsters have dismissed the Wilder effect this year, because Obama did well among whites in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

In Virginia’s Feb. 12 Democratic primary, Obama won handily with 63.6 percent of the vote. Obama outperformed his tally in all of the public polls leading up to the primary.

But Kidd said he still expects some slippage for Obama in the South on Nov. 4.

“I know most people will say they want to vote for the better candidate, but when they get in the voting booth, they might think otherwise,” he said.

Kidd pointed to another polling obstacle. Polling on weekends, particularly on Sundays, tends to miss likely Republican voters, he said.

Two Virginia polls released Wednesday showed dramatically different results, pointing to the importance of how pollsters estimate turnout.

McCain led Obama 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent in a Christopher Newport poll. But in a survey by Public Policy Polling, Obama led McCain 48 percent to 46 percent.

Tom Jensen, communications director for Public Policy Polling, says Christopher Newport underestimated the turnout of blacks and young voters in Virginia, so it undercounted Obama’s support.