Northampton musician Charlie Braun died in 2021 on a Northampton street where he was riding a bicycle when he was hit by a driver who looked away from her phone while making a FaceTime call. Four years later, a bill proposed by Sen. Jo Comerford designed to close a loophole in the state’s distract driving laws has still not passed in the Senate.
“I can’t say why. I wish it would pass. It would be a way to honor Charlie and his family,” the Northampton Democrat said. “Distracted driving is on the rise, as all reports indicate, and this is an extreme form of distracted driving, right?”
The 69-year-old Braun died after being hit by a driver while riding his bike near the intersection of Woodlawn Avenue and Elm Street near Northampton High School. The driver was engaged in a 53-second FaceTime conversation with a friend on her cellphone and was further distracted by her young child in the back seat, the Gazette reported after the crash.
In response, Comerford proposed “Charlie’s Law” to ban live broadcasting and video recording while driving. This bill was heard by the Legislature’s Committee on Transportation last month.
Currently, distracted driving carries an escalated series of fines, including a $250 fine and mandatory completion of a safety course upon a second offense under the state’s Hands-Free Law, which was passed in 2020. Comerford proposed the bill to close loopholes on phone usage in distracted driving cases.
Charlie’s former partner, Joan Ringrose-Sellers, initially joined Comerford in advocating for the bill to prevent future distracted driving-related accidents.
“I think it was really like some grief work for me, because I started noticing other people on the phone after my partner was killed,” Ringrose-Sellers said.
However, as Ringrose-Sellers’ efforts faced opposition and the bill’s passage remained stagnant, she had to shift her focus in order to “grieve in other ways.”
“I felt like I reached a point of not knowing what to do as an ordinary citizen,” Ringrose-Sellers said. “At that time, I was in graduate school, I was a single parent, running a household on my own, and I really needed to shift to getting this master’s degree, and carrying on with my life.”
According to Ringrose-Sellers, her efforts to get the bill passed were met with resistance from the Legislature due to the bill’s potential restrictions on people who need to film themselves for safety in cases like police brutality.
Andrew Hahn, a close friend of Braun, described the impact of his death on the Northampton community.
“Everything became really clear to me that this was like the equivalent of the mayor of the town being killed on a bicycle,” Hahn said.
Northampton’s city government has worked with an engineering firm, Fuss and O’Neill, to research and enact a series of safety measures since Braun’s passing. For example, the Northampton Transportation and Parking Commission voted to remove five parking spaces by Childs Park permanently and proposed the establishment of a school zone.
Other proposed improvements included signalized intersections with pedestrian signals, buffered bike lanes, and a multiway stop control at the intersection of Milton Street and Ormond Drive. The Department of Public Works planned on bidding the project this year, according to the information page.
Hahn said he thinks the intersection’s area remains unsafe and suggested making Woodlawn Avenue a one-way street to avoid Northampton High School’s rush hour traffic.
“That is a very dangerous intersection, no matter how you cut it,” Hahn said. “I worry that the next is going to be a high school kid.”
According to Ian Reagan, a senior research scientist with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, only 8% of fatal deaths are attributed to distracted driving. However, Reagan believes distracted driving cases remain widely underreported due to difficulties in finding the observable causes of accidents and discrepancies in how law enforcement reports on distracted driving across state lines.
“It’s such horrible data,” Reagan said. “Human behavior doesn’t change that much just because you go across state lines and you don’t have distracted driving.”
Reagan said more standardization is needed to accurately report on distracted driving cases, suggesting that telematics could shed light on how prevalent phone usage is among drivers. Telematics uses GPS and sensors to monitor the performance of the car, such as speed and fuel use.
According to Reagan, distracted driving data is collected from drivers who consent to insurance companies tracking their driving and phone usage with telematics data.
Comerford said in a press release that the number of drivers recording videos while driving more than doubled from 2015 to 2021.
“The data are particularly troubling among young drivers: 44% of drivers aged 18 to 29 and 37% of those aged 30 to 39 reported recording video while driving,” Comerford said.
Reagan also reported in a study that the crash risk of drivers who use a phone while driving is two to six times greater than when drivers are not distracted.
While Ringrose-Sellers has not seen the bill enacted, she found satisfaction in finally being able to graduate in May of 2023.
“I know Charlie would be really proud of me,” Ringrose-Sellers said. “He supported me 100% in going back to graduate school, and I’m just sad that he wasn’t there to celebrate with me.”