Let's focus on danger of driving while distracted

                  The recent death of a Hatfield teenager allegedly run down by a texting motorist along Route 309 can only sharpen the debate over Pennsylvania's lax rules on cellphone use behind the wheel.
                  As family and friends continue to mourn the crash victim, 15-year-old Dennis Kee ------ and as Montgomery County prosecutors pursue vehicular homicide and drunken-driving charges lodged last month against the driver, 31-year-old Sarah Derstein of Lansdale ----- the tragedy provides sad testimony to the need to do more to combat distracted driving nationally.
                  For Harrisburg officials, the lesson of Kee's death --- as well as of the thousands of accidents attributed to highway cellphone use every year ----- should be clear:  The stand-alone texting ban enacted by the Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Corbett has failed to get phones out of the hands of drivers.
                 That's partly due to lawmaker's refusal to get behind a ban on using any handheld device while driving, as New Jersey and a number of other states have done.  Had the commonwealth banned the use of handheld phonesin favor of hands-free devices, it would be illegal for drivers to clutch their phones for any reason, not just to engage in the risky practice of reading and sending text messages.
                 Now it's clear that lawmakers should revisit the state's distracted-driving rules and enact such a ban on all handheld phone use.  That would do much more to save lives than merely relying on the hope that more drivers will comply with the text-messaging ban.
                 Lawmakers grappling with a new state budget this month likely will include much-needed additional funding for upkeep of roads, bridges, and mass transit.  Making the roads saver with a ban on handheld phone use would be a natural companion measure.
                But given some state lawmakers' stubborn reluctance to embrace commonsense rules on distracted driving even now, it's that much more important for federal highway safety officials to push ahead with guidelines encouraging auto manufacturers to install electronic devices that cannot be operated unless a vehicle is stopped.  In additionto disabling Internet-linked devices, the voluntary guidelines being crafted by federal officials would specify that no onboard gadget could require a driver to look away from the road for more than two seconds at a time.
               A recent survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that more than a third of drivers had read text messages while behind the wheel, and that nearly that many had sent texts.  It's become clear that only a combination of tougher enforcement and technological advances can protect motorists and pedestrians alike from the risks of distracted driving.