How are Beaufort officers catching more drivers texting than any other agency in the county?

As his daughter prepares to take the driving test this month, Beaufort Police Officer Marvin Tabb-Walker is reminded of the dire consequences texting while driving can cause on the roadways.

“It’s scary,” Tabb-Walker said of the possibility of his daughter or someone else sharing the same road as a driver who is texting. “... It only takes a couple seconds to take your eyes off the roadway and something horrible to happen.”

Tabb-Walker has written 11 citations to drivers for texting behind the wheel. Those citations account for more tickets written by officers in Port Royal, Bluffton and Hilton Head Island combined.

“It’s not shocking,” he said about his statistics. “It’s just simply me getting out here and doing what we’re asked to do, which is to enforce violations on the roadway.”

Spotting someone texting while driving depends on where you position your car, he said.

Tabb-Walker said he writes the citation when he observes a person “is actually distracted for their entire transit” across his squad car and their attention is on their phone instead of the roadway.

“That’s when the clear-as-day factor comes in, because you’re actually looking for other violations, and here comes that one particular individual whose attention is on their phone,” he said.

The average text takes a driver’s eyes off the road for five seconds, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. That means if a motorist is driving 55 miles per hour, he or she could go the length of a football field without ever actually looking at the road.

“It’s not even necessarily what they’re doing on their electronic device,” Tabb-Walker said. “It’s the time frame that their attention is off the roadway … because if you think about it, it only takes about three or four seconds for you to look at your electronic device, travel onto oncoming traffic or rear-end someone.”

Wide disparity among Beaufort County agencies

Nearly two and a half years after South Carolina passed a law prohibiting texting behind the wheel, the regulation has been lightly enforced in Beaufort County.

Since the statewide law took effect in December 2014, the number of citations issued by the Port Royal Police Department, Bluffton Police Department and the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office have each been in the single digits, with Port Royal issuing one citation to a driver for texting in that time.

While the population of Hilton Head is nearly triple that of Bluffton or Beaufort, the sheriff’s office has only written three citations on the island. Deputies wrote six throughout unincorporated Beaufort County.

Asked to explain the sheriff’s office citation numbers, Capt. Bob Bromage said, “Distracted driving is dangerous, but texting and driving is difficult to detect with all the additional duties of a patrol officer.”

Bluffton Police Department spokeswoman Joy Nelson issued a similar statement in response to the six citations written by the police department. “These tickets are difficult to write due to the fact the officer must clearly show and prove the driver was in fact texting and driving,” she wrote in an email.

Of all the Beaufort County law enforcement agencies, the City of Beaufort Police Department has issued the most texting-while-driving citations — 51 tickets, which is more than five times the number of tickets written by other county law enforcement agencies.

Nearly half of the City of Beaufort citations were written for drivers traveling on Boundary Street. And, 44 of those 51 tickets were written by the same three officers, including Tabb-Walker.

South Carolina Highway Patrol has issued 66 citations in Beaufort County, ranking 12th among counties in the state for the most citations. The majority of those citations were written on U.S. 278 and S.C. 170.

Statewide law leaves room for improvement

When the statewide law took effect in December 2014, it replaced many municipality bans across the state, which were tougher.

South Carolina was one of the last states to outlaw texting while driving and also has one of the nation’s lightest penalties.

The law requires that officers observe a driver texting while the car is moving. The penalty involves no marks on the driver’s records, no notification to the driver’s insurance company and a $25 fine.

The $25 fine is lower than the fines set up by local ordinances that went into effect starting in 2012. Ordinances previously established by Hilton Head Island and Beaufort County said that violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined $100 for the first offense, $200 for a second offense and $300 for subsequent offenses.

According to the City of Beaufort ordinance, drivers in the City of Beaufort faced a $50 fine, which increased to $150 for repeated violations. The ordinance also banned those younger than 18 years old from using a cellphone while driving.

Dialing and speaking on a cellphone are not banned under the state law. Exceptions to the law include if the driver is parked, stopped at a stop sign or red light, using a device’s GPS function, using a hands-free wireless electronic communication device, texting a request for emergency assistance, using a digital dispatch system or performing duties as a public safety official.

South Carolina’s fine is lower than in the neighboring states of Georgia, which is $150, and North Carolina, which is $100.

Tommy Collins, owner and primary instructor at First Step Driver Training in Beaufort, has more than 29 years of law enforcement experience as a retired State Trooper.

While he believes the law is written in a way that makes it difficult to enforce, he said the responsibility of decreasing texting behind the wheel is not only on officers.

“When I see as many people as I do and to see the numbers (of citations) are so low … it’s disheartening,” Collins said. “But law enforcement it not a catch-all. It’s going to take personal responsibility to get this problem under control.”

This story was originally published May 22, 2017 at 1:23 PM with the headline "How are Beaufort officers catching more drivers texting than any other agency in the county?."