PHOENIX — A Senate panel quashed a measure to expand Arizona’s seat-belt laws, calling it intrusive.
Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, was only able to get one member of the Committee on Health and Human Services to support House Bill 2460 to require all occupants of a vehicle to be restrained. He argued that the existing law, which covers only front-seat occupants, is insufficient.
The bigger objection was that the measure would allow police to pull someone over solely because someone is not buckled up.
Concerns ranged from giving police more excuses to stop motorists, to improper state intrusion on matters of personal responsibility.
Sen. Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, said it makes no sense to mandate seat-belt use for back-seat passengers when other state laws allow children to be in the open bed of a pickup.
Thorpe said he is not quite ready to give up.
Arizona does have a seat-belt law for adults — sort of.
On paper, front-seat occupants are required to be buckled up. But the current law specifically prohibits police from pulling someone over solely for failure to comply with the law. A citation can be issued only if someone is stopped for some other reason, and the maximum penalty is a $10 fine.
There are separate — and mandatory — laws that govern children.
Thorpe told lawmakers that his experience as a certified emergency medical technician led him to some conclusions about how to save lives. One, he said, is that if people are thrown from a vehicle after a crash, “they usually die upon impact.”
He told of an incident where a teen, sleeping unbuckled in the back seat of a vehicle, was killed in a crash. He said physics show that it’s no safer back there. If a vehicle is traveling 40 miles per hour, the force generated by a sudden stop is 10 times the person’s body weight, he said.
“So if they weigh 200 pounds and they’re in the back seat without a seat belt, the force of their body moving forward is approximately 2,000 pounds,” Thorpe said. That also has the effect of smashing into anyone in the front seat.
Overall, he said, about one-third of those who die in traffic accidents were not wearing a seat belt. In Arizona, that translates to about 400 people a year, he said.
There has been perennial opposition by lawmakers to allowing police the power to pull someone over solely for failure to be belted in. So Thorpe agreed to a compromise: If an officer chose to stop someone for that reason, he or she could issue only a warning.
None of that satisfied Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake.
“I think our law enforcement has a lot of things they need to be doing, a lot of critical things out there,” Allen said. “And I don’t think trying to look over a window and see if everybody in the car has a seat belt is something that is going to be good use of their time.”
She said these issues are matters of “personal responsibility” rather than state regulation.
Sen. Tony Navarrete, D-Phoenix, pointed out the opposition of groups like Living United for Change in Arizona and Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice.
Lobbyist Marilyn Rodriguez, representing both groups, said giving police the power to pull someone over solely for failure of an occupant to wear a seat belt “will expand pre-textural stops and will result in the overpolicing of communities of color.”
Only Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, agreed to support the legislation. She compared it to her own efforts to ban texting while driving, saying that having a law on the books would encourage safer behavior.
