For a lot of us, the ping of a text alert from a cell phone can be irresistible. But when you're getting behind the wheel, text messaging on the phone becomes a risky affair. Distracted driving killed nearly 5,500 people in 2009, and transportation officials say texting while driving is a major factor.

Starting Wednesday, a new Maine law takes effect that makes texting in car a primary offense. This lets police hand down a $100 fine to anyone who is reading or writing a message, and not just via text. Getting on Facebook, your e-mail, or scrolling through your electronic music library could also land you in trouble.

"I actually think that's probably a really good thing," said Tess Grossi, a 28-year-old customer service coordinator from Portland. "People text too much, they shouldn't be paying attention to their phone at all while they're driving."

Grossi said that just the day before a driver in front of her "was weaving a little bit back and forth in his lane."

"As I passed him," Grossi said. "He was definitely texting on his phone and I honestly would have called the cops had he swerved a little bit more."

But not everybody thinks that the new law is a good idea.

This 36-year-old electrician, who asked not to be identified says he has no problem texting while driving, that he's perfectly able to "concentrate on the roads, stay straight, stop at stop signs, blinkers and all that stuff, yeah."

He says not even hefty fines -- a second offense is $135 -- will stop him from texting in his car. Failure to wear a seat belt is also primary offense, and he doesn't follow that law that either.

He's been fined more than $200 for two offenses -- which he admits he'd rather not have had to pay.

But I don't want to wear a seat belt either," he said. "I shouldn't be forced to do something. It's supposed to be a free country. It's just big government again, big brother watching over you, trying to protect everybody."

State police Col. Robert Williams says he knows there are some people who will never change their behavior, but he thinks most will.

"Really what we're trying to do here," Williams said "is get voluntary compliance because in 2010 about 39 percent of the traffic crashes 'cause in Maine were contributed to some type of inattention or distraction."

Williams says it will be easy for law enforcement around the state to tell who's distracted using their phone: "Either their head is down not looking at the road, or they have it up in their line of sight and you can see it yourself."

It's still legal to make calls in your car, and Williams says police will know to tell the difference.
"We'll use some discretion there. If somebody is driving down the road and they have the phone on the pedestal and we see them look over, and put in a series of numbers and look back to the road and start talking, we're going to figure that they're talking on the phone as opposed to the person who may have their phone and they literally look at the phone and be pushing buttons for 20, 30, 40 seconds sometimes."

Maine's law is the 31st in the country. It succeeds another state law, which allows police to cite motorists for driving distractedly, but only -- Williams says -- if the behavior leads to an accident, or to drifting onto say a rumble strip, or median.

Time will tell what kind of impact the texting bans will have nationwide, said Pat Moody of AAA of Northern New England.

"The amount that texting has increased in popularity. It's probably outpaced the law in some certain circumstances," Moody said.

Moody said that California initially saw dramatic safety improvements when it implemented its law.

"And then, they did some research about 8 months to a year, and they saw, 'Wait a minute people are texting and driving more than before the law. But really what we're talking about is, more people learning about texting. People now look at their cell phone plans and do I want to focus in on the minutes, or do I want to focus in on the texts. And for the most part now, I think more people are texting than using their minutes now."

Moody says AAA is trying to raise awareness about the new law with young people. But driving school instructors. Theodore "Buddy" Mountain say that the new law won't change the way he teaches his classes to teenagers.

"When we talk to our students," Mountain said. "We would discourage them from any distraction driving anyways."

But Mountain, who runs a driving school in Houlton, says that Maine's $100 initial fine is not high enough to stop teens from texting in the cars.

"Not until one of them has a close call or something happen to them they maybe will think twice," Mountain said. "Or Mom and Dad enforce it. The police can't enforce it unless they see it."

The law's sponsor state Sen. Bill Diamond said that if necessary, the fine structure can be revisited in later Legislatures. But Diamond says he's optimistic that a reduction in texting-related accidents will become apparent within years of the law taking effect.