A new scientific analysis recently showed what most could have guessed: texting while driving is dangerous.

That's because not looking where you are going makes you more likely to crash. And because speedy vehicles bear destructive inertia.

Almost everyone texts in 2016, and a few glances at your surrounding comrades during the Houston rush hour would suggest that many of them habitually text while driving. That's because it's allowed in Houston.

RELATED: Editorial: A no-brainer bill

So lots of people are doing something that both science and commonsense says is very dangerous, even deadly. Shouldn't the authorities be doing something? Probably. Texas is way behind the times.

It was 1997 when the first federal study deemed screen time at drive time a bad idea. Back then more than 1 in 10 Americans were "using cellular telephones," according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The first state ban on texting while driving in the U.S. passed in Washington in 2007, and since then 45 other states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, approved similar legislation.

That leaves Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas without statewide bans. So what's the deal here? Turns out, Houston and Texas have toddled towards the idea of a ban for years but never managed to get it done.

Texas came closest in 2011, when a bipartisan bill to outlaw texting while driving landed on the desk of Gov. Rick Perry. He denounced the measure as "a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults" and vetoed it.

Other opponents of the law called it pointless and impossible to enforce. Indeed, a study found that 660,000 U.S. drivers were texting at any given daylight moment in 2013, even after dozens of state bans had passed.

Proponents said it was important to get the law on the record anyway.

After Perry's veto, a handful of Texas cities stepped in to fill the void. Amarillo, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, Missouri City and others banned texting and driving. Houston tried, kind of, but the effort never really took off.

RELATED: 40 Texas cities that ban texting and driving

Mayor Annise Parker appeared beside local rapper Bun B in a 2013 promotional video for a citywide ban and held a news conference to push the cause if the state legislature failed to pass the measure that year.

"It is a big deal. It kills people," she said.

The Legislature failed to pass the measure. House Bill 63 would have made it a misdemeanor to twiddle with a cellphone and drive. It passed the house, but its Senate companion was never put up for a vote in the upper chamber.

Parker shifted her rhetoric away from a ban, finding little easy reception in City Council.

"We are really focused on the public awareness campaign," she said.

Efforts stalled, mired in complications over where to post the relevant road signs announcing the ban and how to pay for them. Parker warned that instating a ban on "piecemeal basis" in the Greater Houston would create confusion over where it would be enforced, according to Houston Public Media, even as other cities in the region, including Bellaire and West University Place, adopted their own bans.

It came up in the state Legislature again in 2015, again passed the House, and again it never made it to a vote int he Senate.

In November the Chronicle reported, "City could take up a texting ban before Parker leaves."

But it never happened.

Next hope is for the 2017 state legislative session to get Texas caught up with driving laws for the Digital Age.

An earlier version of this article said a texting while driving ban never made it to a legislative vote in Texas' 2015 session. The bill passed in the House but never made it to a Senate vote. This article has been updated.