John W. Olver: “I find it a little bit difficult here where we're taking from one place and putting it into another place. I don't…”

“I find it a little bit difficult here where we're taking from one place and putting it into another place. I don't dispute what the chairman has said about not being certain that the money will be used for the right purpose at that point; however, the place where the offset is being made from the Financial Management Capital program under DOT, that amount leaves that account with the same amount that was in the account in 2012. That should not be a particularly onerous change on that score. On the other hand, the issue that the gentleman from Virginia has raised, the issue of the distracted driving and how important it is, we are just losing a lot of young people to distracted driving. There seems to be no sense that being on a cell phone or an iPad or some other of the common IT programs that are now available, working with that doesn't seem to lead to any sense that their driving capacity has been impaired. In 2010, NHTSA estimated that more than 3,000 people were killed and more than 400,000 were injured in distracted driving crashes. Secretary LaHood has made the elimination of distracted driving one of his key safety priorities and has requested funding in each of the last three budgets to do that.…”