By Angela Greiling Keane

Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON -- The federal government Tuesday banned texting for commercial bus and truck drivers as part of an effort to combat traffic deaths stemming from distracted motorists.

Violators may be subject to civil or criminal penalties of as much as $2,750, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Tuesday in Washington.

LaHood has made the issue a priority after more than 5,800 people died in 2008 in accidents where at least one form of driver distraction was cited in the crash report. Tuesday's move comes almost four months after President Obama banned the nation's almost 3 million federal employees from texting while driving on the job.

"Our regulations will help prevent unsafe activity within the cab," said Anne Ferro, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. "We want to make it crystal clear to operators and their employers that texting while driving is the type of unsafe activity that these regulations are intended to prohibit."

Research shows that drivers take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds for every 6 seconds spent sending and receiving text messages, the Transportation Department said in a statement.

The ban announced Tuesday doesn't apply to in-cab computers, according to the Transportation Department. Drivers for shippers such as FedEx and United Parcel Service use portable computers in their vehicles to scan package deliveries and drop-offs and respond to messages from dispatchers.

The agency has the authority to immediately prohibit texting by commercial drivers and would have to go through the federal rulemaking process to bar the use of in-cab computers while driving, which LaHood said last year he plans to do.

The American Trucking Associations, which lists as members companies including FedEx, UPS and Overland Park, Kansas-based YRC Worldwide, said it supports the texting ban and would like it to be extended to non-commercial drivers. YRC is the largest U.S. trucking company.