A call for more stringent teen-driving laws

Pennsylvania is permitting hundreds of preventable deaths each year - especially of teenagers - by not enacting stronger traffic-safety laws.

That was the unflinching message delivered Tuesday at a hearing for the House Transportation Committee: Pennsylvania lags behind most states on teen-driver restrictions, cell-phone bans, and seat-belt legislation.

The speakers were mostly national experts attending Lifesavers 2010, a national highway-safety conference, held this year at the Convention Center. They took a break from their program to provide lawmakers with impassioned pleas - and statistical evidence - to support more stringent laws.

Flaura Winston, a pediatrician who founded and directs the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said "a watershed of new data" suggests that limiting a teen driver's teen passengers can dramatically reduce "the seven classrooms of high school students" who die each year in Pennsylvania.

"Just one teen passenger doubles the risk a teen driver will get into a fatal crash; three or more passengers quadruples the risk," she said, adding that although Children's supports House Bill 67, which would limit a teen driver's passengers to one, she would prefer no passengers at all.

Such a provision might have prevented the deaths of Andrew Case, 17, and Michael Cantamaglia, 16, of Barto, who were killed Nov. 23 in Chester County.

Case's mother, Marlene Case, offered the day's most gut-wrenching testimony, explaining how the boys piled into the car of Austin Ewers, 16, with three other friends. Pennsylvania law permits as many passengers as the vehicle has seat belts.

Marlene Case said Ewers, a licensed driver of only three weeks who has admitted smoking marijuana before getting behind the wheel, had dropped his cell phone and reached to find it before losing control of the vehicle on Route 724 in East Coventry Township.

She said she has become an advocate for restricting teen drivers so that no one else has to endure "the emptiness and anguish we're feeling since that day."

Starting May 1, New Jersey, which already limits teen passengers, will become the first state in the nation to require all probationary drivers under age 21 to display a reflective decal on both license plates of any motor vehicle they operate.

The new law also prohibits teen drivers from using any wireless communication device, hands-free or not, and makes failure to buckle up a primary offense. In other words, a violator can be cited for failing to use a seat belt.

David Preusser, president of the Preusser Research Group, called Pennsylvania's seat-belt law, which requires a police officer to observe another violation and write it up before issuing a $10 ticket for a seat-belt violation, "one of the weakest in the nation."

Justin McNaull, director of state relations for the AAA, said making the failure to use seat belts a primary offense - a position long advocated by the Pennsylvania State Police - is "probably the quickest, simplest way for lawmakers to save lives."

The data on cell-phone use are not so clear. Even though experts agree that cell-phone users - hands-free or handheld - are four times more likely to crash, bans have not produced significantly reduced crash rates.

David Teater, senior director for the National Safety Council, said one reason may be that bans on handheld phones may prompt more people to get hands-free devices, which have not proven to be safer.

After the presentation, State Rep. Joseph F. Markosek (D., Allegheny), the committee's majority chairman, said he was optimistic that House Bills 67 and 2070, which ban handheld cell phones for all drivers, would be passed by the Senate "very soon," but he urged people to make their voices heard.