Daniel Rubin: A Pa. disconnect on the cell phone

Jacy Good loaded up on political science classes at Muhlenberg College, but never learned so much about government as when she tried to lobby the Pennsylvania legislature to ban drivers from talking on handheld cell phones.

"It's frustrating," says the 23-year-old Lancaster native, "because so many politicians had their minds made up before I walked in the door. It didn't matter what I said to them."

For Good, just walking through legislators' doors was a challenge. On May 18, 2008, the international studies major was driving home from graduation with her parents. A teenager in a minivan crossed lanes into the path of a dairy truck. He was on the phone.

The dairy truck swerved and hit Good's car head-on. Both of her parents were killed. She doesn't remember what happened from that day to nearly two months later, when she found herself traveling by ambulance to a rehab hospital.

She'd broken her collar bone, pelvis, left wrist and leg, and both feet. She's been undergoing physical and occupational therapy ever since.

When she learned that State Rep. Josh Shapiro was trying to prod legislators to ban drivers' use of handheld cells this spring, she called the Democrat from Abington to offer her services. They weren't enough.

Shapiro's measure died in the House, by a 100-95 vote. Good says she heard a lot in Harrisburg about how the measure would deny drivers their civil liberties. Her answer: seat belts.

"We make that a law because it protects a passenger's safety," she says. "With a cell, you can hurt so many other people."

When it comes to distracted driving, Pennsylvania legislators are asleep at the wheel. Philadelphia, whose ban becomes a ticketable offense in November, is miles ahead.

Maybe the New York Times' articles this month will get lawmakers' attention. The stats made Good feel ill - how drivers on the phone are four times as likely as other drivers to cause a crash. It's as if they're driving around with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent. (Someone my size could down four beers in less than an hour and still not be that impaired.) Texters increase their odds of a collision by 23 times.

Worse, she said, was the news that in 2003, the National Highway Safety Administration withheld hundreds of pages of research that underscored the danger of any sort of phone conversations while driving - hands-free or not.

The agency had recommended a long-term study of 10,000 drivers, but the Times reported that officials killed the study, lest Congress think it was lobbying.

I asked Shapiro what he made of the series. The last time I talked to him - a year ago - he gave me grief for answering the phone in the car without an earpiece.

I've reformed. I use a hands-free device now. It's hard for me to answer the phone without thinking of the sweet-spirited Jacy Good, whose lame arm ends her plans to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

Shapiro says he'll try running his bill onto the floor again this fall. "I think we'll get all the Republican cosponsors who bailed on us," he said. It wasn't just Republicans. He didn't get votes from 27 of the measure's cosponsors. Couldn't have helped that he was weighing a run for the Senate at the time.

One of the bill's former backers, Duane Milne, a Republican from Chester County, said the biggest problem with the ban was that Shapiro tacked it as an amendment onto a good bill to protect teen drivers. Milne said he voted "no" out of fear it would have hurt the main bill's chances in the Senate. He, too, thinks a cell-phone ban could pass if introduced as a separate item.

"I'm not giving up," insists Good, who says she will never forget the legislators who talked about individual liberties and the nanny state. Even harder to take are those men and women who looked her in the eye and said "Yes," then voted "No."