Bill defeated to outlaw X-rated videos on vehicle video screensParents complained their kids saw them, assemblyman says
Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
You're cruising down Interstate 80, kids crammed into the family sedan, when Junior spots the flickering images on the video screen in the Honda Odyssey one lane over and starts snickering.
Taking your eyes off the road, you spy the featured attraction: writhing naked bodies enjoying fleshly pleasures in the porn epic "Caught from Behind."
Ah, the challenges of modern parenting.
"We've had a number of people complain that stopping at a light they've seen sexual acts of the kind we don't want to speak of displayed on the video screen in the car in front of them,'' said Assemblyman John Benoit, R-Palm Desert (Riverside County).
So Benoit, a former California Highway Patrol commander, introduced legislation that would have made it illegal for anyone to exhibit "sexually explicit material in a motor vehicle . . . knowing that the material is visible to the public."
Unfortunately for Benoit and other opponents of fast-lane frolics, the bill was defeated Tuesday in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
Unlike the bill, however, the issue isn't going away, Benoit said. With the proliferation of DVD screens and advances in technology -- including the size of in-car screens -- "it's only going to become more of a problem," he said.
The California Highway Patrol agrees that driving distractions are a concern, though it doesn't differentiate between porn videos and other entertainment offerings shown in the back seat and doesn't take positions on legislation.
The number of citations issued statewide for drivers distracted by video screens in their vehicles has risen from 105 in 2000 to 920 last year, the CHP said.
"The increase is a direct result of video screens being made more readily available in vehicles,'' said CHP spokesman Tom Marshall.
The CHP doesn't keep statistics that single out video-watching -- G- or X-rated -- as the cause of accidents.
"In California, you practically live in your car,'' Marshall said. "People who are going to be in their car for two hours want to do something else. We like people to concentrate on driving. It's not the time to do something that will distract you -- be it playing with the radio, talking on a cell phone or watching a video.''
Benoit said his bill, supported by the conservative Traditional Values Coalition and California Family Alliance, was pro-family but not anti-porn.
"If you want to play a pornographic film in the privacy of your own home or your own bedroom, that's your business,'' he said. "But when you display it where people can see it while they're driving, that's inappropriate.
"Try to explain to your 5-year-old what he just saw when he wonders, 'Why was that man doing that to that woman?' It's a hard thing.''
Kat Sunlove, legislative affairs director for the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the pornography industry, said the bill didn't restrict only DVDs, and would have improperly required drivers to monitor the reading, listening and viewing habits of their passengers.
"I want drivers to be focused on the road -- not on whether a kid half a car length behind them is looking into their car,'' she said.
Besides, Sunlove said, it's not as though the proliferation of video screens is turning the highways into four-lane adult theaters.
"Most of the videos being show in the back seats of SUV's are kids movies, '' she said. "It's parents driving and trying to occupy their kids. The number of adult videos being shown has got to be very small.''
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