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.”