You can't text and drive.

Not in Virginia.

Not any more.

Not legally.

Effective July 1, texting behind the wheel became a primary offense. A law enforcement officer can now arrest you for texting while driving. The fine has also been increased. As a secondary offense, the old law required Virginia police officers to first stop a motorist for another offense and if they were also texting then that additional charge could be made.

The new fines are not nearly steep enough but they are getting there. Fines of $125 for the first offense and $250 for the second and all subsequent offenses replace the old fines of $20 and $50, respectively.

The texting law and fines are important because last year more than 20 percent of all crashes in the commonwealth-28,112 of them-were caused by driver distractions, according to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

Cell phone use or texting were major contributors to those accidents and the 174 fatalities and 16,709 injuries that those crashes produced.

Motorists may feel inconvenienced at not being able to totally disregard highway safety by taking their eyes and hands off the steering wheel to type someone a message while they careen down the highway.

But being killed or maimed, it seems to me, is a far greater inconvenience.

According to state data, most distracted driving crashes occurred with 21 to 35-year-olds behind the wheel. The top three driver distractions, DMV notes, were:

* Drivers not having their eyes on the road.

* Fatigue.

* Cell phone use.

Because people take their eyes off the road to dial cell phone numbers and to text, reasons one and three merge into an intersection that can become quite deadly.

The new state law and increased fines may convince some drivers to give up texting behind the wheel. Not everyone, unfortunately, will be persuaded that recklessly endangering themselves and others is not so important as typing shorthand gibberish about something of no consequence at all. (Pull over and text if the communication is one upon which the fate of humankind depends.)

But if even one person decides not to text and drive-the person who would have crashed into you-the new law is a Godsend.

-JKW-