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| Florida State Representative Rich Glorioso and State Senator Nan Rich show off their Legislator of the Year awards. |
Legislators honored for their work on improving Florida's safety belt law
Honoring them for their work in helping to strengthen Florida’s weak safety belt law, AAA Auto Club South recently presented Legislator of the Year awards to State Senator Nan Rich (D-Sunrise) and State Representative Rich Glorioso (R-Plant City).
Sen. Rich and Rep. Glorioso are traffic safety heroes, as the new law they supported is destined to save many lives in the years to come. In fact, as this issue of Going Places went to print, traffic deaths in Florida for 2009 were down by more than 350 fatalities compared to the same date in 2008.
After facing their defiant colleagues for more than a decade, Sen. Rich and Rep. Glorioso persuaded a majority of Florida’s 160 lawmakers to agree—once and for all—that the law requiring drivers and passengers to buckle up is important enough to be enforced like all other traffic laws.
The Dori Slosberg–Katie Marchetti Safety Belt Act—Senate Bill 344-House Bill 1, as the law is known—untied the hands of law enforcement by removing the so-called “secondary enforcement” clause. This clause previously prevented law enforcement officers from pulling over or issuing tickets to motorists who were not buckled up unless there was another “primary” infraction. Proponents of this new law asserted that the old law sent a deadly message—that buckling up is not as important as all the other traffic laws on the books.
AAA worked for years to strengthen Florida’s safety belt law with an alliance that included dozens of other organizations, as well as families who lost loved ones. Dori Slosberg and Katie Marchetti were teens who died in crashes, but both likely would have survived if they had been wearing safety belts. Their heartbroken parents joined the fight to fix Florida’s weak law, and they asked that it be named in memory of their children’s lost young lives.
At the award presentation ceremony, Sen. Rich spoke of a recent crash in South Florida where her car spun around three times. She said that wearing a safety belt probably saved her from injury. And Rep. Glorioso told of recently rushing to the scene of a horrific high-speed two-car crash, only to find everyone—including three small children—buckled up and safe.
These two legislators took on a difficult challenge, persuaded many to join them, and never gave up, even when the odds were against the bill’s passage. We at AAA Auto Club South salute their unwavering efforts to pass this lifesaving bill into law.
For more information on traffic safety, as well as AAA’s work on behalf of the motoring public, visit AAA.com/SafetyMatters.