Residents focus on teen driver safety

A high percentage of all Sahuarita drivers (87 percent) and high school drivers (77 percent) are using their seat belts, but a lower fraction of student passengers (54 percent) are doing so, according to a survey done recently by Sahuarita police volunteers.

While some of that information is encouraging, local officials and residents met Monday at town hall to explore ways to improve teen driving safety.

The meeting was chaired by S.T.O.P. (Sahuarita Team Offers Prevention) committee leader Marty Moreno, who also is a Town Council member.

Many local teenagers may get a dose of seat-belt awareness at Saturday’s town hall grand opening, where seat-belt education will accompany a battle of the bands, but parents, police, school and town officials and the Sahuarita Teen Advisory Council are looking for ways to carry the message beyond that event, especially after a January vehicle crash claimed the life of a Sahuarita High School student, the second student traffic death this year.

Some of the approaches discussed:

The Sahuarita Police Department is hoping to start offering a student driving academy at no charge within a year, perhaps sooner given the apparent interest on the part of the community, Lt. Henry Leyva said.

The project depends on donations of land, one or more vehicles and tires, and the department plans on approaching the mines shortly for land, then asking local car dealers for help, Leyva said.

Sahuarita Police Chief John Harris said the academy would stress time behind the wheel and practical driving skills such as avoiding collisions and learning how to deal with the tendency to oversteer and so it would not duplicate courses.

The Tucson Police Department has operated such an academy for residents for years, one that includes many elements of the driving instruction given to TPD officers, he said.

The Sahuarita PD has proposed to the high school's Student Council that it help devise an awareness and reward system for seat belt usage among students.

Harris said such a system worked well in the Wyoming town where he was chief in the past. Students there named it “save your ugly face” and helped obtain donations of money and prizes that were given to teenagers who wore seat belts.

The school district is studying ways to offer driver's education, not currently offered to any students, to some of its projected 425 sophomore high school students. But questions exist on how many certified teachers are on staff and how much of the district’s scarce resources should go to driver’s education as opposed to other electives, Superintendent Jay St. John said.

The superintendent noted that he was pleased that other agencies were involved in the task force, saying “it can’t be a school-only (project). It’s not a school problem, traffic safety, it happens to fall to us as the only way to get to students is through us. It’s not a state requirement and there are no state standards for driver's education.”

St. John noted that many district students live outside the town and drive to school in disproportionate numbers. He said after the meeting that there is a very low correlation between driver's education and safety.

A new state law that goes into effect on July 1 will affect drivers between the ages of 16 and 18. Instead of a full driver's licensr ae age 16, they will start with a Graduated Drivers’ License that would restrict how many other teens could be in a car with them. Governor’s Office for Highway Safety Official and DPS Officer Cecilia Lerma said passengers are a dangerous source of distraction for younger drivers. Lerma and Javier Herrera, administrative services officer with the highway safety office, said they would provide easy-to-understand descriptions of the new law to school officials, who said this was the first they had heard about it.

Parent Ken Woodward, who is a member of the town Planning and Zoning Commission, asked if there were a way to reduce the speed limit in Sahuarita on Interstate 19 from 75 mph to 65 mph, the limit in Green Valley. Woodward said many younger drivers are in older vehicles.

DPS Officer Kevin McNichols said the speed limit on I-19 is up to the Arizona Department of Transportation and said task force members could contact ADOT. Lerma suggested contacting District 30 state legislators also: state Sen. Tim Bee and state Reps. Marian McClure and Jonathan Paton.

The information on the seat-belt use came from Volunteers In Police Service who assist the SPD. They peeked at about 400 drivers a day at the traffic signal at Rancho Sahuarita Boulevard and Sahuarita Road and about 135 vehicles a day at the east parking lot of the school district’s main campus for three days in February.

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738