The Daily Times

Nancy and Joe Polakiewicz have spent several months traveling to area schools, churches and driving academies to tell a story that’s become very important to them.

On Wednesday, the Greenback mother and son flew to Washington, D.C., to speak at an Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety (Advocates) press conference about the accident in October 2010 that nearly took then 16-year-old Joe’s life.

The conference, which focused on a 2012 report on highway safety laws and gaps existing between certain states, welcomed representatives from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Nancy Polakiewicz said Joe’s story would hopefully give legislators a face to put on the growing number of crashes involving inexperienced and teen drivers.

According to an Advocates press release, the organization compiles an annual report grading all 50 states on their performance in adopting 15 basic traffic safety laws. This year’s report focused on the financial impact put on those states that failed to pass a number of these laws.

“If states want to save lives and save money, they should look to the 2012 Roadmap to State Highway Safety Laws for guidance,” Advocates President Jacqueline Gillan said. “This report shows that too many states have unacceptable and deadly gaps in their traffic safety laws. Political leadership and action are needed now.”

Nancy Polakiewicz said that action needs to come in the form of the Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection (STANDUP) Act. The act, first introduced to the Senate and House in spring 2011, would establish federal minimum graduated driver license requirements and encourage states to adopt those requirements within three years.

“They’re trying to get these laws passed to try to prevent these kind of crashes that Joe had,” Nancy Polakiewicz said. “And we’re one of the lucky ones. A lot of these statistics have to do with fatalities.”

Trapped in car

While Joe Polakiewicz doesn’t remember the particulars of his crash, he was found by firefighters trapped in the front end of his yellow Volkswagen Beetle off Big Springs Road in Friendsville the night of Oct. 16, 2010. The back end of his car had been flung some yards away after the car struck a tree off the road.

He spent several months in the hospital recovering from serious injuries, but somehow survived.

Even though her son lived through it all, he still hasn’t fully recovered from the extensive head trauma he experienced, Nancy Polakiewicz said. It will be a long process, and there’s always a “What if?” in the back of her mind.

“We wondered (what) if Joe had just been a little older,” she said. “You just wonder if that could have made a difference. He’d only had his license for two months. He was 16. And they’re finding so many crashes within the first few months of getting a license.”

The Advocate report released Wednesday ranked states on current traffic safety laws. “Good” states ranked green, states with room to improve received a yellow rating and states with the lowest number of safety laws were rated red.

Tennessee ‘good’

Tennessee was among 18 states which received a “good” green rating, with 10.5 out of 15 laws on the books.

The areas of improvement for Tennessee were listed as raising the minimum age for a learner’s permit to 16, adding recommended nighttime driving provisions for teen drivers and raising the age for an unrestricted license to age 18.

But even if laws are tweaked here and passed there, Nancy Polakiewicz said, that’s just the beginning of creating safer roads throughout the nation.

“The other thing I’ve realized with this is getting these graduated driver license laws passed and getting them a little stricter is just the bottom of the barrel,” she said. “The next thing is just educating parents ... it’s one thing to pass the laws but you have to educate the people and enforce these laws. So I think it’s just the start of it all.”

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