When Becky Hergatt nearly lost her son last June in a power window accident, it was the first time she successfully resuscitated anyone.
Hergatt, a nurse from Mansfield, said her son, who was 5 years old at the time, got his neck stuck in her car's power window and she had to give him mouth-to-mouth.
He was hanging there by his neck
she said. Like a guillotine. That's a particularly gruesome way to kill kids.
Parts of five bills introduced by U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, have been resurrected in an amendment to the Senate version of the national Highway Transportation and Safety Bill, which aims at preventing accidents like Hergatt's.
The bill, which passed the Senate by a vote of 76 to 21, also creates a new federal office to improve driver education, provides more safety information to car buyers, calls for child-sized crash test dummies and criminalizes the sale of mobile infrared transmitters.
The transmitters are used by ambulances and police officers to change traffic signals from red to green, said DeWine's spokeswoman Amanda Flaig. Their sale and use by private residents has been linked to traffic incidents in California.
The bill also requires states to identify, rank and disclose to the public the worst roads and intersections. Failure to do so would result in the state losing all of its federal highway safety construction funding.
Brian Cunningham, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation, said the bill would provide $40 million in safety funds to the state in the next fiscal year. This money is part of Ohio's federal highway allocation, which stands to be between $940 million and $1.2 billion, depending on final version of the bill.
In 2002, the last year for which statistics are available, there were 1,284 fatal crashes on Ohio's highways, said Susan Raber, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Public Safety. This is 26 fewer than in 2001.
The National Office of Driver Licensing and Education created by the bill would offer states a place to gather information on improving their licensing programs, Flaig said.
Other bill provisions require the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to concentrate specifically on the safety needs of children, Flaig said. The administration currently performs tests using child-sized crash test dummies, but no regulations exist requiring it to.
The bill also would create more than 70,000 jobs and bring almost $9 billion to Ohio over six years, said Scott Milburn, spokesman for U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.
Ohio's taken a hit to its manufacturing sector Milburn said. These jobs are needed.
Cunningham said the $8.9 billion would come from an increase in Ohio's rate of return on its gasoline tax. Currently, Ohio gets back $0.90 per dollar in tax paid to the federal government. After six years, that rate would rise to $0.95 per dollar.
The bill is currently in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House of Representatives.
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Chuck Bowen
