Distracted driving protection needed for road workers

Luciana Stock looked away from the road for 6.3 seconds while driving to work the afternoon of Sept. 5, 2017, trying to locate a pack of cigarettes tucked in the front console of her car.

In that six seconds, Karen Smith lost her husband and father of her two children; Stacey Moyer began a journey of rehabilitation for her critically injured husband, and Stock, now 22, started a legal course that resulted in a jail term, probation and a lifetime of regrets.

While Stock’s eyes were off the road, her car struck David Smith and Jeffrey Moyer as they were part of a Franconia Township road crew painting lines in front of the West Broad Street Elementary School near Souderton.

Smith, 53, died of multiple injuries suffered in the crash. Moyer, 46, was airlifted to Temple University Hospital where he faced extensive medical procedures and rehabilitation. Life will never be the same, Stacey Moyer told Media News Group reporter Bob Keeler in a recent interview. Her husband suffered some brain damage and may never be able to work full-time again.

The two women spoke with Keeler as the second anniversary of the crash approaches to raise awareness about distracted driving and the dangers to road construction crews. Specifically, they would like to see safety measures for road crews spelled out as laws, not just guidelines.

And they would also like to see drivers understand — really understand — the potential impact of distracted driving.

While laws in most states address the distraction of cell phones for talking and texting, Stock’s case proves that fatal distractions go beyond that.

Changing a radio station, checking hair and makeup, turning to a passenger in conversation, reaching for a drink in the cup holder — or locating a pack of cigarettes — can result in a driver taking his or her eyes off the road.

Stacey Moyer said it wasn’t unusual for her husband to say a driver had just missed hitting him.

“There were multiple times a year he would come home and say, ‘Well, I almost got hit today, this lady was driving by with her cell phone,” or ‘I almost got hit today, this guy wasn’t watching,’” she said.

More should be done to let drivers know they are approaching a road crew, Moyer and Smith said. Rumble strips and having more flaggers at both ends of a work site would provide warning even to a distracted driver.

“When you look up the Pennsylvania work zone guides for municipalities, a lot of what the road crews set up as far as safety is considered guidelines,” Karen Smith said. “They aren’t law in Pennsylvania.”

Moyer said she realizes some of the safety features can inconvenience drivers, but it’s more important to keep people safe. “It’s somebody’s life that we’re talking about, and that’s someone’s husband or wife or father or brother or sister, and to me, that’s worth it,” Moyer said. “Having been through the hell that we’ve been through, it’s worth it.”

In 2017, 132 workers were killed in work zone related crashes according to National Highway Safety Administration data.

Karen Smith and Stacey Moyer take personally the mission to reduce that number and make work zones safer.

As part of Stock’s sentencing, the two families asked that her community service sentence include speaking engagements to young people about the dangers of distracted driving.

State laws setting safety guidelines must be strengthened to enforce staffing and increase warning requirements at work sites including rumble strips to alert drivers.

And most important, drivers need to be aware of the extreme danger of taking your eyes off the road even for a few seconds.

That text, those sunglasses, that change in music can wait.

Get off the phone; fix your hair when you arrive at your destination; save the snacks for later. Workers’ lives are in the balance.

Karen Smith and Stacey Moyer know what can happen in just 6.3 seconds.

The results are devastating.