Mom fighting for tougher seat belt law

As a health care administrator, Kelly Thomas-Boyers of Summerlin knew how important it was to wear a seat belt.

But that fact hit home recently when her son Adam, 21, was involved in a car accident, March 10.

"When we got the phone call, I heard the word 'ejected' and knew exactly what it meant," she said. "I knew it would be bad."

She caught the next flight to Reno, where Adam was attending the University of Nevada, Reno, studying journalism and health policy. When she got to Renown Medical Center, Adam was in intensive care, hooked up to machines with tubes everywhere. He was in a coma.

Doctors quietly ran down the list of injuries -- brain injury, collapsed lungs, broken leg, ruptured spleen.

The list went on. Adam underwent a cranioscopy, a procedure to reduce pressure on the skull when there is brain swelling.

CAT scans seemed to provide hope, so much so that Thomas-Boyers went to the university to enroll him in classes for fall. But the hope flickered out when he took a turn for the worse.

Adam died on March 18. In the hospital room with him were nearly 40 people -- family and friends, and even his dog, Memphis.

Now, his mother is carrying on his spirit by working to get a new seat belt law in place in Nevada.

Bill 42 would make not wearing a seat belt a primary offense.

Right now, it is a secondary offense, meaning if motorists are pulled over for another traffic violation like speeding and are found to not be wearing their seat belts, they can be cited for both.

Currently, the police do not have the authority to pull over a driver for simply not wearing a seat belt.

Thomas-Boyers is approaching various politicians, many of whom knew Adam because he was an intern at the Capitol. She is appearing at community events, like the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Click it or Ticket events, to increase motorists' awareness of seat belt use.

On May 8, she testified before the Legislature, saying her son might be alive if the law had been in effect.

He had been in the car five minutes, she told legislators, when a pedestrian ran across the road.

The car swerved to miss the pedestrian and her son was ejected in a roll-over accident. Investigators have not yet determined who was driving the vehicle.

"The investigators told me that, given the little damage to the car ... he would have (lived) if he'd been wearing a safety belt."

Jason Frierson, a lobbyist for the Clark County Public Defender's Office, previously spoke out against the bill.

He said an amendment was needed to ensure police could not pull people over on the pretext that they were not wearing seat belts and then charge them with nontraffic-related offenses.

Kevin Honea, state trooper with the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said he sees horrific injuries at least once a week.

Jay Coates, trauma surgeon at UMC, spoke of a January 2000 motor vehicle accident that involved football star Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs.

One man was dead at the scene, Thomas was paralyzed and died a couple weeks later, and the third person -- the only one who had on a seat belt -- was uninjured.

"Wearing a seat belt is the difference between walking away from an accident and going to the morgue," he said.

Last year's Nevada Highway Patrol SafeStat report shows Nevada had 432 deaths from motor vehicle accidents.

Of that number, 172 did not have on seat belts. They accounted for 53 percent of the crash deaths, the disparity due to bikes and motorcycles being among the 432 figure.

The proposed seat belt legislation was tabled -- never made it out of committee -- by Kelvin Atkinson, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, who was unavailable for comment. The move means the bill will not be heard by the state Senate this year.

Passage would have given the state $5.5 million in federal funding for highways.

Thomas-Boyers said she plans to continue her fight to get the law passed, and hopes it will be reconsidered during the Legislature's next session.