"No texting from the driver's seat" is likely to become state law soon.

Michigan moved closer to becoming the 20th state to ban text messaging while driving with the passage of a State Senate bill Tuesday, January 26. Senators passed the measure by a vote of 31 to 6, and with a similar bill already approved in the House, supporters say the House and Senate have only to agree on a final version of the legislation before it can be sent to Governor Jennifer Granholm for her signature. She has already said she will sign it into law.

The move should find favor with drivers and voters: 90% of American adults said sending a text message while driving should be illegal, according to a New York Times/ CBS News poll published in September 2009.

Use of cell phones and similar devices, particularly to send typed text messages, is proving to be a dangerous distraction on the road. Distracted drivers account for almost 80% of all crashes and 65% of near-crashes in the country, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Mackinac County Sheriff Scott Strait thinks the ban can't come soon enough.

"It's a very dangerous practice. Talking on the cell phone is dangerous enough, but texting is even worse," he said. "Can you carry on a phone conversation while also following the plot of a movie? No. You can't divide your attention while driving, either."

The county sheriff's office doesn't track the number of accidents or near-misses that may have dented fenders locally as a result of cell phone use, but he suspects the phones play a significant part in distracting drivers' eyes and minds from the road.

"'Distracted driver' is a cause cited often on our accident reports," Sheriff Strait said. Any distraction can cause a serious accident.

Drivers who send and receive text messages take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds out of every 6 seconds spent texting, research shows. At 55 miles per hour, this means that the driver is traveling the whole length of a football field without looking at the road.

The sheriff advises drivers to turn the phone off entirely while driving, so they're not tempted to answer a call or message.

"Concentrate only on driving, and not anything else," he said.

As the Senate bill stands, police can ticket drivers for the offense once they have pulled them over, but they can't pull people over specifically for that reason. This mirrors early seatbelt laws, which later were strengthened to became a primary offense, meaning police could pull over drivers if they were seen without seatbelts. The text ban bill proposes fines of $200 for the first offense and $500 for each additional offense.

The same day the Michigan Senate voted for the texting ban, the federal government took its own steps to curb the practice, starting with commercial trucks and buses. The U.S. Department of Transportation prohibited texting by drivers of the rigs, effective immediately. Truck and bus drivers who text while driving may be subject to civil or criminal penalties of up to $2,750.

"We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the roads with them to be safe,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in a press statement. “This is an important safety step and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving.”

Truck drivers who text while driving are more than 20 times more likely to get in an accident than non-distracted drivers, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a division of Mr. LaHood's department that focuses on reducing crashes in trucks and buses.

Here in Michigan, a recent study released by the Michigan State Medical Society names texting while driving as the most dangerous distraction on the road.

Even before the federal text ban for truckers was put in place last week, President Obama had ordered federal employees not to engage in text messaging while driving government-owned vehicles or with government-owned equipment. Workers were required to comply starting December 30, 2009.

Several groups have spoken out in favor of the ban, such as AAA, automakers including the Big Three and Toyota, and AT&T and other large cell phone service providers.

AAA Michigan wants to see it passed as a primary enforcement offense.

"Text messaging is one of the most dangerous things a driver can do behind the wheel of a moving vehicle," said AAA Michigan Traffic Safety Manager Jack Peet.

Yet, survey after survey shows that an alarming number of drivers do it."