Progress
We've been making progress over the past few months. In January, we spoke to over 700 students at Bishop Hartley high school. We also spoke with a unit of the Ohio National Guard, reinforcing the message to use their leadership to role model behaviors. We've also been working with the students at Gahanna High School to form a SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) chapter so the lessons from Sydnee's crash can live on beyond the students who knew her. As part of those discussions, we also participated in an investigative report by ABC6 about texting and driving.
We have continued to work with State Representative Sheehy to reintroduce the bill to make Texting and Driving a primary ban for all ages, which ran out of time for a floor vote in the last session. This bill should be introduced into committee this week.
Additionally, I attended a lecture by Dr Bruce Simons-Morton, a lead researcher in teen driving. There, I learned about a great tool to help parents monitor their teen's driving behaviors while they are not in the car, and thus loosen driving restrictions as teens demonstrate good independent driving behaviors. Below is a link to this program, as well as a link to receive this service free of charge if you're an American Family Insurance customer.
http://www.lytx.com/our-markets/family/overview
http://www.teensafedriver.com/
I'm working with AAA Ohio and contacts at Nationwide Insurance to see if we can get this invaluable program more visibility to help save teen lives.