Bill Targets Fall-Asleep Fatal Wrecks

Take a nap. Rent a motel room. Just don’t drive tired.

That’s the message state Sen. Jeanine Long wants to send with a bill that creates stiffer penalties against sleepy drivers who cause fatal car accidents.

The bill would make “sleep-driving homicide” a misdemeanor subject to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.

The issue is a personal one for Carolee Felt, a Mountlake Terrace woman whose husband was killed by a motorist who fell asleep at the wheel.

The driver, Jeffrey Wishman of Kirkland, was charged with negligent driving and paid a $250 fine. He was paralyzed in the accident and now uses a wheelchair.

Investigators discovered Wishman had worked a full day at his job and then had gone home and worked all night on his new apartment. Without even taking a nap, he started to drive to work on Highway 202, near Redmond.

Wishman’s 1-1/2-ton flatbed construction truck went over the center line and smashed into 52-year-old Wayne Felt’s bakery truck.

“This was typical of fall-asleep collisions,” said Jonna VanDyk, spokeswoman for the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

That was May 1994. Since then, Carolee Felt has been fighting to keep her husband’s memory alive by boosting the penalty for “sleep-driving homicide.” She’s getting help from Long, a Republican lawmaker from Mill Creek.

“I learned about it from this constituent. I don’t know if it will pass, it is more of a wake-up call,” Long said. The bill, SB5302, has been referred to the Senate Law and Justice Committee.

Safety experts estimate that one in five motorists have dozed off at least once while driving. Between 1990 and 1994, there were 163 deaths and 1,097 serious injuries in Washington from collisions in which one driver apparently was asleep.

There may have been more, but the cause of fatal accidents often get recorded as “crossed center line” or “driver inattention.”

In other developments Monday:

Timber management

In a last-ditch effort to stop a timber management agreement between Uncle Sam and the state, the House on Monday sent the Senate a bill to require lawmakers’ approval for such pacts, called habitat conservation plans.

The bill, which passed 66-30, faces uncertain prospects in the Senate and the strong possibility of a veto by Democratic Gov. Gary Locke if it gets that far.

Sponsored by Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, the bill would apply retroactively and therefore undo an all-butsigned agreement between the Department of Natural Resources and the federal government to manage 1.63 million acres of state-owned timber as an integrated ecosystem rather than tract-by-tract and hillside-by-hillside. The habitat agreement, scheduled to be signed Thursday, would be in effect from 70 to 100 years.

Buck and other backers said the agreement sets aside far too much timber for too much time, and is not fiscally prudent. He said the Legislature should have a voice in timber management, especially since the proceeds from selling state logs helps pay for public schools and other needs.

“We (legislators) are the trustees of this timber, and we must be involved,” he said.

Foes said the agreement makes sense because it gives the state “regulatory certainty” and allows it to plan for timber cuts well into the future, regardless of regulatory changes. By setting aside timber areas to protect endangered species, the state is free to log in other areas even if it means killing or disturbing endangered species there, they noted.

The state Board of Natural Resources signed the habitat conservation plan last year, following the lead of several large timber companies that had chosen to enter into similar long-term agreements as a way to do business within the constraints of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Lands Commissioner Jennifer Belcher, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service are to sign the agreement Thursday in at a Seattle ceremony to be attended by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Belcher said Monday the House measure is ill-conceived.

She said the natural resources panel spent two years studying the issue before approving it.