- [Announcer] Live from your public media studios, WVIA presents "Keystone Edition Reports," a news and public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is "Keystone Edition Reports."

And now, moderator Julie Sidoni.

- Thanks for tuning in for "Keystone Edition Reports".

I'm Julie Sidoni; I'm the director of journalism here at WVIA.

In the next half hour, we'll be discussing distracted driving, one family's loss, and a hope for safety on the roads with passage of a new law in Pennsylvania.

- [Announcer] You may be familiar with this statistic from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Sending or reading a text message while you're driving takes your eyes off the road for an average of 5 seconds.

At 55 miles per hour, that's like driving the length of a football field with your eyes closed.

And texting is just one of many types of distracted driving out there.

In this half hour, "Keystone Edition Reports" will bring you the story of a woman who lost her son to a distracted driving incident.

We'll look into legislation recently crafted here in the Commonwealth to help prevent it, and we'll talk about how law enforcement might go about handling these highly-preventable distracted driving cases.

Then, later in the show, you'll learn how you can be kept in the loop, a new feature we're debuting so you can get your questions on this topic answered by an expert.

"Keystone Edition Reports," now brought to you by WVIA News, starts right now.

- This summer, Governor Josh Shapiro signed Paul Miller's Law.

It is named for a Lackawanna County man who was killed by a distracted tractor trailer driver.

One of the driving forces behind that law is Paul's mother, Eileen Miller.

She's joining us along with Senator Rosemary Brown who sponsored that legislation and WVIA News reporter Roger DuPuis who has been following Paul's story and the distracted driving law.

I would first love to say thank you to each of you for being here, and I would love if you could introduce yourselves and tell the audience a little bit about who you are and what brought you here tonight.

We'll start with you, Eileen.

- I'm Eileen Miller, and I am Paul Miller's mother, and I'm a road safety advocate.

And, of course, we're here because of the wonderful legislation that we finally got passed and that got signed into law by Governor Shapiro and my great partner that helped me so much, Senator Rosemary Brown, which I can't thank enough.

- Looking forward to really digging into this tonight.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Roger.

- I'm Roger DuPuis.

I'm a reporter here at WBIA News, and among other things I cover transportation.

- All right, Roger, thank you.

And Senator?

- Senator Rosemary Brown, the 40th Senate District.

I have full Monroe County, parts of Wayne County, and parts of Lackawanna County.

- Thank you all very much.

And first, we would like to just take a little bit of a look at Eileen Miller, her life at home.

- After Paul passed away, you know, we did have his ashes, he was cremated and that, but we decided to put this in our backyard.

One reason because my husband having ALS and not getting to the cemetery.

And we really believe like, Paul was such a very spiritual soul person.

He's really not there.

He's with us and in our hearts.

This is like really where we honor him besides the legislation and everything else that we do.

I wanna make it very clear to people not to be on the phone, so I put "In Loving Memory" with his picture, "No Phone Call or Text is Worth a Life."

And right now, more than ever I see more people on their phone.

Everybody thinks it's never gonna be them, but it literally happened to my son and so many other families in Pennsylvania.

And now, this legislation, Paul Miller's Law, which is Senate B.

37, it will be a beacon of protection for every passenger and driver in Pennsylvania.

For a mother who could not even recognize her son at the morgue, there's nothing that important; turn it off.

This is kind of Paul's memory room.

Paul had like all his trophies.

He was a great athlete, mostly all baseball.

And what guided me right away at the crash was the handle of Paul's car.

And all I could hear was Paul saying, "Mom, you can get a handle on this; you can get a handle on this."

And, you know, there was blood on it and there was all dirt in it; and this was just laying there and I keep it here.

And on days when I struggle, like when my legislation kept being pushed back, I would say, "I got this" and I felt like I was holding Paul.

I always say I'm a mom with a mission, not a politician.

(laughs) People are now calling me from other states saying, "How did you get it done?"

"Will you work with me now?"

And I was like, "You have to be in for a big long fight."

It's not an easy fight, it's not.

But we did it, and I'm so happy my husband was here to see it, very happy that my husband is here to see it.

There's always tears.

Sometimes they're happy tears, sometimes they're sad tears, but we think about the good happy memories with Paul.

He was known for his big great smile.

And I'm sure he's smiling down and saying, "You did it, Mom."

- And this is exactly where I want to start because before we get into anything else, I just wanna hear about Paul.

What kind of guy was he?

Tell me about him.

- Well, like I said in the video there, he was a very spiritual person.

Everybody who met him just knew him for his great smile.

He was a wonderful person who...

I didn't even really know how much he touched people till after he passed and people started reaching out and said, "He helped me at school."

He worked at Gerrity's, so everybody, when he worked at Gerrity's, so many people would say like he would help them, go up to 'em after work and reach out to every single person and say, "Have a good night."

"Anything I could do for you?"

But even people that went to Lackawanna and down at ESU, you know, after he passed would say, "I needed help with work and he would help me."

And he did so many more things than we had thought that he had done.

I mean, we thought he was a good person, but to hear it come from other people was just really, really special.

- [Julie] At the age of 21 even; he was fairly young.

- Yeah, he was.

And it's funny because when he was younger, he went through a period where he was, you know, a little smart alec where I think all children get to be at some point.

But then, all of a sudden, he really quickly changed and matured so fast, and people kept telling us, "Paul really changed."

And people were like coming up to us saying, "Your son has changed so much, he's become a man."

And it happened so fast and so quick.

And we noticed that swing in him and he became very polite.

But he always knew he wanted to become a police officer and I didn't know if that had anything to do with it.

but he really, really, I think the spirituality in him... For graduation, he didn't want a graduation ring.

He wanted a big Irish salted cross for himself that he wanted to prove his Irish heritage that he had, even though he had German in him also and Slovak.

But there was a big shift in him and it's like he knew something big was coming.

We didn't know what that big was until July 5th.

But he really was.

And he had so many friends.

Once you met him, he was your friend forever.

- July 5th of 2010?

- 2010, correct.

- I don't wanna dwell too much of course on that incident, but I am curious, Roger.

When did you first meet Eileen or, I mean, do you remember reporting on this?

- Physically, yesterday, (group laughs) but we've talked on the phone many, many times and gotten to know her story.

And it's just such a powerful story, and we're gonna talk about some statistics tonight, but nothing can really convey the tragedy like Paul's story, like what Eileen and her family have been through.

And for me, and I think for a lot of people, hopefully, this makes it real.

- The bill that we're talking about, Senate Bill 37, correct?

- Correct.

- That seems to be specific to a handheld device.

Was there any talk about a more, I don't wanna say complete, but is there any talk about bringing other types of distracted driving into this?

Talk a little bit about what happened on your end here and how the two of you got to meet.

- Absolutely.

Actually, Roger and I before we sat down here tonight, were talking about this a little bit in regards to when I first started on this, it was all-encompassing as far as eating, reading the newspaper while you're driving, people would say people are shaving while they're driving- - Adjusting makeup.

- Right.

And it was a very broad piece of legislation and with that becomes very difficult to how do you really enforce that?

Yes, we should all be very responsible in our driving.

And I think over the years and over time what happened was to say where can we focus in and what seems to be the largest distraction?

And working with Eileen, knowing the situation of what happened, focusing in on the cell phone because the cell phone is consistent, it's repetitive, and it holds your attention for a much longer period of time than other distractions.

Now, other distractions are just as bad, so we wanna make sure that we continue to talk about distracted driving on a more comprehensive level.

And we are doing that with the state police; there's all sorts of information out there.

But specifically, this legislation was focused on the cell phone for those very reasons and because in the modern world, it seems to be taking over as the priority in the car as compared to driving.

- Certainly.

We just talked about it.

We have all seen this.

I see with my own eyes people holding the phone up every day.

So I'm curious, Roger, there's some statistics that you have been looking into that were...

I mean, I think we knew that this was a concerning issue, but Roger has pulled up some statistics that I think are really shocking.

What have you found in your reporting?

- Right, among other things, I just wanna find the numbers here, but Pennsylvania was behind our neighboring states in terms of passing legislation like this.

So you could travel into and out of New York and Maryland and Ohio and all these other places with very, very strict laws, and we did not have that.

We only had a texting and driving law, which came into effect in 2012.

So for us, really, there wasn't a penalty, right?

There was no...

I think you wanted to talk about numbers, so I apologize.

- No, no, that's okay.

- You couldn't enforce that, too.

- You couldn't enforce it.

- [Brown] That law of 2012 was met with a good intention, but the enforceability of it- - Right, how is that enforced?

Well, while you're calling up some statistic here, how is this bill going to be enforced?

I think there could be some concerns there too.

- Correct.

I think with any, when you're driving, if you run through a stop sign, when the police officer pulls you over, "Well, you ran through a stop sign."

"No I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

If you believe that you're not guilty, it's the same process.

You would go through the court system and say not guilty and sort of go against the citation.

But what an officer would do, the old law would say no texting and driving.

How's an officer to know that you're texting?

This law takes the phone out of your hand.

And so if an officer sees you driving, which you'll see oftentimes like this: people driving down the road, like this, right in front, right?

And so if they see it in your hand or they see it supported with any part of your body, they can pull you over.

So it's a visual and it's an ability for an officer to say "Put down the phone."

So it's don't touch the phone.

You can use the phone speaker with Bluetooth or speaker technology, but don't hold it or support it with any part of your body.

- Were you shocked to find out this didn't exist already?

- Yeah, I knew it when my son passed away, and that was the whole reason for me going after the law.

Because back in 2010, there wasn't much knowledge about it.

And Paul, in the FARS report, he's just a road crash fatality; he's not even listed under distracted driving.

- So this could even be far under-reported than what we even think?

- That's why I don't even go by the numbers because I know so many people that it is not reported.

And the police, unless it's in their hand at that time, unless you get a search warrant and go after it, it's not till you're in court going after it do they realize that that's what it is at that time.

So it's very hard, but with this legislation, it's really gonna... Plus, also, it's a primary offense, which is what our main goal was and that was part of the whole hard process of the 12 years was getting it to be a primary.

It kept being amended- - Explain that.

Go ahead and explain that.

- Well, Senator Rosemary Brown and I had that hard issue is every time we would go and we would be before the House, somebody would stand up and amend it back to a secondary, and then they would vote on it and push it back to a secondary.

So again, we would have to wait till the next session, bring it back up again, and it kept constantly being they did not want it, they did not want to pass the legislation.

- And what that really means is that if they see you holding it or they see you supporting it, they can pull you individually over for that offense.

A secondary would mean we'd have to stop you for something else before we could then cite you- - You're speeding, but also- - Also you were on the phone.

- Exactly.

- So it's a secondary.

And so it was really important to get ahead of, you know, any sort of crashes to say primary offense, to really save lives; and Eileen was a big advocate of this and so was I for that.

- Yeah, we were really pushing for the primary.

And it was just very hard to see that every time before the session that it just kept being amended and pushed back and amended and pushed back, and we needed that primary as, like we were saying, when you're driving down the road to get this out of your hand and to make sure that people are not constantly scrolling, texting, emailing, Tik Toking, all of that.

But we never thought that it would take 12 years.

- Well, let's talk about that then.

I mean, you've reported on this now for quite some time and, obviously, there are other distracted driving incidents than Paul's.

So why has it taken so long?

Because I understand that there's probably opposition from both sides of the aisle, and I don't want to get into specifics or names, of course, but I am curious what the argument was against it.

- So, Roger, do you wanna say anything that's on your reporting side?

- I will, yeah.

I don't wanna put you on the spot; so yeah, not at all.

- I'll let Roger answer and then I'll put a little bit into it too, since, Roger, we've been taking over talking.

So if you wanna add something to it and I'll add to it.

- My sense is there were a number of factions and one was the trucking industry, right?

There were concerns in the trucking industry about how this would affect operators.

The other was folks who were concerned about individual liberties felt that a law like this would take away, you know, some critical individual liberties, right?

I think there are people, and Eileen has spoken to this many times, who feel that you shouldn't be pulled over for just using a phone, right?

They didn't feel it was that serious.

Although as Eileen knows and has spoken to it, it can be deadly.

And then, the other concern was, there were matters of equity, right, that this could be another tool that could be used improperly to pull over drivers of color, and so there were concerns about that.

So everyone both on the left and the right, on the right I think had a reason to be concerned that this was taking away liberties and opportunities.

And also for low-income drivers, there was a feeling that they might not have access to the hands-free technology, which I know Eileen has spoken to.

- Were you able to work through any of those concerns?

- We were, and I think what you would find through the legislative process, and as Roger stated, there's always a reason you can't do something, you know, why somebody doesn't wanna do something, but then how you get past that and how you bring attention to the issue.

And really, from my end was government's number one responsibility is to protect the people.

So you want to respect the rights of everyone, but there's a responsibility when you get behind that wheel that you are as responsible in your behavior as possible.

There's a reason we have DUI laws, there's a reason because we wanna make sure that the responsibility is there in the driver to prevent someone from dying in a crash when they were doing everything right.

Paul Miller Jr. was doing everything right.

And that's what you wanna say avoid as much as possible, so you have that responsibility, and that's where I pushed and pushed and pushed to say, this is government's job to do this and the law should be strong and the responsibility should be strong on the driver.

And then, you had a little bit of where you're saying, "Why not everything?

Why not all the distracted driving?"

And again, because that's very difficult to enforce all of that.

So what can you do to make a difference in our modern world, this seems to be the focus.

But we did work through the ability of how we would enforce for the rights of all people.

And then, also on a traffic stop, if you are stopped, we have some data that's taken in from the police officer that could then be kept and filed, that we can make sure that there's no discrimination happening in any way.

- Well, we're gonna be right back.

We're going to take a detailed look at Paul Miller's Law, including the consequences of using a handheld device while driving right after this.

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- I would kind of like to get back to you just a little bit here.

How were you able, in your grief, to even think about someone else, to even think about the state of Pennsylvania, to think about somebody else's driver out there?

I think that would be sometimes difficult for some people.

- I think that actually just started at the morgue.

I whispered in Paul's ear that, I didn't know it was distracted driving at that time, but I just whispered in his ear that, I just couldn't even identify him, and I just whispered in his ear that I would find out what caused that crash.

And it was that bad.

I could not even recognize him that when I found out what had caused that crash that I would fight for change.

And I whispered in his ear that I would find out, and I did find out that it was distracted driving.

And so Paul died July 5th, 2010 and Senator Brown at the time was in the House, was elected in November, and I then started going from state to state.

They were having distracted driving summits, and at the time Secretary Ray LaHood was having them.

So I was going there and I was going back and forth and finding out like how they were getting laws.

And I would come back and I met Senator Rosemary Brown, who was, like I said, in the House then.

And at the Safe 80 Task Force meetings down in Monroe County, the Pocono Record was having Drive to Stay Alive campaigns.

So I met her then and I was going state to state and coming back and saying like, "This is what they're doing there, can we do it here?"

And she was a newbie and said, "Let me get my feet off the ground, let's get going."

And I will be honest, I went to other senators and I did go to other representatives, and they would not touch it.

They would not go near it and they would not help me, and I begged them.

And I knew her and I knew that she would be the one.

And she just kind of wanted to get her feet off the ground.

But once I was giving her my story, and she was a mom, and once I really met her and got to know her more, I knew she would be the one, and she certainly was.

And I just wanted it not to happen to anybody else, and nobody should have to go to a morgue where they can't even recognize their child from something so preventable; and these are all preventable, and these are crashes because of a cell phone, something because of a cell phone.

- [Julie] Just couldn't wait for whatever that was.

- Whatever it was.

And everybody, every time you hear that ping, you know, everybody wants to reach for it.

They get a little squirt of dopamine off their brain and they wanna keep reaching and reaching and reaching for it.

And there's no text, no cell phone, no nothing worth the life.

- What actually does this law say?

So what is, I mean, I can ask if you've done some reporting here, but also you, of course, Senator, if you're watching this from home, what's gonna happen to me if I'm caught?

- It's a normal traffic stop.

- It's a summary offense.

- It's a summary offense and it's a normal traffic stop.

There's no points to your license.

That is something, I gotta be honest, that I did want because I felt that that would show the serious nature of this, but it was something we had to give and take on.

I also didn't want to hurt the driver.

So that was a piece, you know, you want it for the seriousness of it, but you also don't wanna hurt the driver.

I don't wanna see, this is about saving lives, and that's what Eileen and I have said this whole time.

She has been a champion with me since day one, to lose a child and begin advocating and going through this difficult process.

It's meant to say put the phone down, save lives, not hurt the driver, let's change behaviors.

Let's change behaviors so that we can make sure our roads are safer.

- How big of a problem, Roger, is this really?

I mean, people would say, "Oh, distracted driving, of course, nobody should drive distracted."

But it seems to be a bigger problem than what we anticipated.

- Right.

At the time Senator Brown's bill was signed into law, PennDOT released some statistics that last year in 2023 there were 11,262 distracted driving crashes in Pennsylvania.

That compares with 8,330 alcohol-related crashes, right?

And we know that DUI is a significant problem; this is even more significant.

And I know that's not the number of deaths.

But if we look at this, we're in national respective, and assuming that it is underrepresented, as we think is the case, about 3000 people a year die in distracted driving crashes in the United States as a whole.

And those stats I know are up on the screen right now.

For comparison, that's a 9/11 every year.

Remember that we lost about 3000 Americans in 9/11.

And that's what we're facing every year due to distracted driving, so I think it is a significant problem.

The numbers are staggering.

- [Eileen] And preventable.

- And preventable.

- So you're here talking to the public, but how do you suppose going about educating people about this?

- Well, that's what I do.

I go into schools and I speak at colleges, I go all over.

And I'm free.

I don't charge.

(laughs) I tell Senator Brown that every time somebody calls me... And normally, I go around prom time and I tell them Paul did everything right.

He didn't drink and drive.

He was at a party, but he was further, he was supposed to go to ESU, he was in Bethlehem, he stayed overnight, he did everything right.

Somebody else did everything wrong.

So I tell them life is all about choices and I tell them "What will your choice be?"

And honestly, when I'm out speaking, I just spoke at a conference just the other day at the Masonic Temple and they're like, "Oh, your program changed now that you got the law."

So I'm like, "Did you like the program before or now they're better?"

And they were all so happy that I got the legislation.

But everywhere I go, people will come up to me and I pass out these Paul Miller story distracted driving red, white, and blue, and a lot of them will come up to me in the mall and say, "I still have my band."

I tell them wrap it around their phone when they're driving or put it on their stick shift to remind them not to touch that phone.

And a lot of them will say, "Since I heard your story, I haven't touched my phone since."

The problem is it's their parents who are doing it, so it's the older generation.

So I think this generation will be the one that stops it.

Even my granddaughter will be like, she calls me Muma, she'll be like, "Muma, I saw somebody on their phone.

They're gonna crash and injure somebody."

They're getting the message.

It's when I'm out speaking they're telling me it's their parents that they're trying to take the phone away from.

They're the ones that they're more afraid of.

Even the man who killed my son at the time, he was 28.

He wasn't a kid.

So it's the older ones that...

Even now when I'm driving and I'm out, it's people who are my age or older that I see on the phones.

- Now you have me thinking about how often my phone is in my hand when I drive and perhaps that's the point of doing something like this.

Roger, do you have anything to leave people with?

- It's just sort of shocking.

I mean, I come on Interstate 81 every day to come up to the station.

And the other day, I was trying to get on and there's a lady who's squeezing in and passing me as I'm trying to get on the on ramp, but she has her phone up to her face.

And she's our age.

This was not a child, right?

So I'm trying to merge onto Interstate 81 and there's a woman with her phone up to her face.

And so as a reporter, I don't take opinions on things, but I think this is an area where I do and we all need to put the phones down because we all see it.

- And I even said at the signing at the governor, I told everybody, you know, my husband, a year after Paul was killed, started tripping, falling, walking into the walls.

Almost two years to the day he was diagnosed with ALS.

So I have a husband who's in a wheelchair who can't walk.

His arms are getting weak.

His voice is getting very weak.

And my phone is never on in the car.

Even with this legislation, I still say turn it off.

There's no phone call, no text worth it.

I really would like everybody to start turning them off because every time you, like I said, when you hear that ping you wanna reach for it.

Really, there's no technology, nothing that important.

Let's just get used to being off it.

The life you could be saving would very well be your own, so turn it off.

- Eileen, thank you so much for being here.

Roger DuPuis and Senator Rosemary Brown, thank you so much.

We could talk about this for a very long time.

That's all the time we have for now.

We covered a lot here on the show, but if you have questions or thoughts about something we did not cover, we wanna hear from you.

Head over to our page, submit your questions, and we might just answer them on our new YouTube show, "The Loop," on Friday afternoon.

That wraps up this edition of "Keystone Edition Reports."

For all of us at WVIA, we'll see you next time.

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