On Sept. 15, 2016, 9-year-old Logan Scherer was killed when a driver slammed into the back of his families car on Interstate 75 near Brooksville.
Logan was in the back seat with his sister, his mother and father were in the front.
Brooke Scherer says the driver who hit their car was traveling at more than 100 mph and didn’t see them because he was on his phone.
“Logan was killed instantly. Jordan, myself and Mallory were all very critically injured,” said Brooke Scherer.
She and her husband are now fighting to change Florida’s law on cell phone use while driving.
“We quickly knew that the only way we were going to be able to survive this hell was to do something about it,” said Scherer.
State Representative Jackie Toledo is introducing legislation that would make cell phone use while driving a primary offense, allowing police to pull someone over and give them a ticket if the officer sees them on their phone.
“I believe that this law will change behavior as it has in the 46 other states that have put a ban on texting and driving,” said Toledo, who says she and her family were nearly hit by a distracted driver earlier this year.
“As I looked inside this persons car, they were texting and driving. They never even looked up. They never saw me coming,” said Toledo.
Under current Florida law, drivers can only be ticketed for texting while driving if they are stopped for something else, like speeding.
Toledo introduced a similar bill last year but it failed to pass through the Senate.
Toledo believes this years bill has a better chance of passage because distracted driver accidents are increasing and she believes her bill will help reverse the trend.