Utah's road safety laws better, but still lacking

Utah received an improved but still mediocre grade for roadway safety laws this month from the Emergency Nurses Association.

The group said Utah has adopted nine of 13, or 69 percent, of the types of laws that it says are most important to protect drivers and passengers from death or injury. Utah added three of those types since the group's last scorecard two years ago.

For example, the group said Utah in the past two years joined 42 other states to require use of booster seats. It said Utah also joined 20 other states to require booster seat use for children up to age 8.

Other areas for which the group praised Utah were for having a child passenger safety law covering children up to age 16 in all seating positions; mandating an ignition interlock devise to stop habitual drinkers from starting cars if they have been drinking; and graduated driver licensing laws that do such thing as require 30-50 hours of supervised driving while learning, restricting nighttime driving of new drivers, and allowing new drivers to transport only one passenger.

The group says Utah still lacks such important safety laws as requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, requiring motorcycle helmets to meet certain safety specifications, and allowing police to issues citations to drivers or passengers for not wearing seat belts as a "primary offense" (not needing to pull them over for other offenses first).

Utah's grade still put it in a tie for 14th best among the states. Only two states — Oregon and Washington — received perfect scores.

"Every year, there are more than 40,000 deaths on our nation's roadways. We can reduce those numbers and we know how," said ENA President Denise King. "We must call on our policymakers to pass laws that are proven to reduce injuries and fatalities."

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