By Larry Rulison | Times Union, Albany, N.Y. (TNS)
Albany, N.Y. — Members of the state’s stretch limousine safety task force say they are hoping the Assembly and Gov. Kathy Hochul will get behind a last-ditch effort to extend the task force’s operations through 2025.
“We have unfinished business,” said Ronald Barton, a retired state Department of Transportation commercial vehicle inspector who was a member of the 13-person task force.
The task force, made up mostly of current and former state transportation officials, last met in the fall of 2022 after completing a 154-page report on their findings and recommendations on new limo safety regulations for the state Legislature to consider.
The task force was created in the wake of the 2018 limo crash in Schoharie that killed 20 people and remains the worst transportation disaster in the U.S. in more than a decade.
The task force included representation from not only state government and law enforcement but also the limo industry. Family members from the Schoharie crash and the 2015 limo crash in Cutchogue, Long Island — Kevin Cushing of Saratoga Springs and Nancy DiMonte of Long Island — were also appointed as well as Barton, who has been an outspoken critic of the DOT since the crash.
Although Hochul pushed through a package of new limo safety regulations as part of this year’s budget process, she has not supported bills introduced in the Senate to extend the task force’s operations through 2025, allowing the committee to discuss a state Inspector General report that was critical of the way the DOT and the Department of Motor Vehicles handled the limo company in the months leading up to the Schoharie crash.
The IG report had similar findings to the final report on the crash by the National Transportation Safety Board, which also faulted the New York DOT and DMV, saying the two agencies didn’t do enough to get the 2001 stretch Ford Excursion involved in the crash off the roads after it failed multiple safety inspections.
DiMonte, whose daughter was severely injured in the 2015 limo crash in which four of her daughter’s friends died, says she would like the task force to be extended so she can talk about what’s being done with drivers who are impaired by marijuana.
Under state law, stretch limo drivers must get alcohol and drug testing, but DiMonte is worried that there are no reliable standards for measuring marijuana levels in drivers post-crash like there is for alcohol. Her daughter’s limo was hit by a driver who had been drinking, although prosecutors couldn’t prove he was legally drunk.
DiMonte is worried that a similar limo crash could happen involving marijuana, particularly now that its use is legalized in New York.
“This is no joke,” DiMonte told the Times Union. “It has to stop.”
However, it appears a herculean task to get the task force extended. Even though the Senate recently passed a new version, the Assembly has not acted on it. Assemblyman William Magnarelli, who chairs the Assembly’s transportation committee, has said he won’t entertain the bill if Hochul doesn’t support it.
A Hochul spokesperson would only refer to the limo safety laws that the governor signed into law as part of the budget and would not address the task force extension bill.
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