House again will take up mandatory use of seatbelts
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By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: January 19, 2009
MONTPELIER – The House of Representatives will renew its push this year to ban teenagers from driving while using cell phones.
The provision is part of a wider highway-safety bill that institutes nighttime curfews for 16- and 17-year-old motorists; mandates hands-free cell use for all drivers; and changes the state's seatbelt statute from a secondary to a primary offense, meaning police officers can pull over drivers solely for not wearing the safety restraints.
"We had an enormous amount of support for this in the House last year, and we felt it was an important bill to attempt to move forward again," said Rep. Maxine Grad, vice-chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The bill passed by a more than 2-to-1 margin in the House last year before undergoing fundamental revisions in the Senate. In conference committee, the legislation was whittled down to a single item – a blanket ban on cell phone use and text-messaging by teen drivers.
Still, the measure died when Senate President Peter Shumlin said he wouldn't let the bill out of committee unless representatives agreed to roll back the state's graduated licensing rules, wherein new licensees must wait a period of three months before they can transport younger siblings. Shumlin wanted the time frame reduced to 30 days. Grad and other representatives refused, and the bill died.
Primary seatbelt enforcement and graduated licensing will likely remain sticking points in this year's debate, despite testimony from numerous law-enforcement and traffic-safety officials who say the measures would save lives and reduce accident rates.
"People ask me, 'Why is it so important to have primary enforcement? Do you actually believe being able to pull a person over and give them a ticket is going to make them wear a seatbelt?'" Officer Timothy Tuttle, with the Rutland City Police Department, told lawmakers Friday. "Well, yes. Unfortunately, we have to have a law that tells people to use common sense."
Safety experts told lawmakers that Vermont could improve seatbelt usage rates by as much as 5 percent with a primary enforcement law, and said highway fatality statistics from 2008 (about half of the 72 deaths involved people not wearing seatbelts) underscore the potential health benefits of the legislation.
Shumlin said Sunday that the state's already high rate of compliance with the existing seatbelt law undermines the rationale for primary enforcement. Vermont has, for two years running, exceeded the 85-percent compliance mark; the state won $2.7 million in federal funding for doing so.
"I believe that our current system is working," Shumlin said. "There's an old adage up here — if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Shumlin also retains his aversion to the graduated licensing requirements, in spite of state data suggesting that teen accident rates have declined by as much as 90 percent since the rules were instituted. The Putney Democrat said decisions about when a child can drive his or her siblings ought to be left to parents, not government.
"The provision that I found troubling for a rural state is when government tells families that it's illegal for them to allow one sibling to drive another sibling to school or the doctor," Shumlin said. "It's my firm belief that you're entering an area that should be a decision between parents and their children, and there's no one that cares more deeply about children than their own parents, and therefore government should get out of the way."
That perspective has upset proponents of the graduated licensing rules, including Tom Williams, regional director of AAA Northern New England. He says the law saves young lives and said it would be irresponsible to weaken the statute.
"To say the least we were appalled last year when the Senate gave consideration to weakening some provisions of this law," Williams said. "We know statistically that this law has saved lives and reduced crash rates."
The bill introduced by Grad is a carbon copy of the legislation that passed through the House last session. Lawmakers may tweak the language before getting another 'yes' vote in the House, after which a debate in the Senate will ensue.
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