YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — The tears are still flowing, nearly 13 years after their son died while investigating a different fatal accident. But Karen and David Reever say Pennsylvania’s newly-toughened “Move Over Law” — supplementing the existing “Steer Clear Law” — could prevent future families from suffering as theirs have.
“I think it’s a great law,” Karen Reever said of the provisions, which are due to take effect April 27. “It should have been done years ago.”
But she cautioned: “The thing is, getting people to do it.”
Since 2001, Pennsylvania drivers have faced penalties for not being careful around emergency responders and construction crews. That wasn’t enough to save the Reevers’ son, David Tome, who died in 2008 after a woman who later went to prison drove her car into him while he was investigating a fatal crash from the previous weekend.
Among other provisions, the enhanced law:
- Raises from $250 to $500 the fine for a first-time offender
- Includes stranded motorists — alongside emergency responders and construction crews — as people requiring the extra attention
Motorists are required to move over one lane or — if they can’t do that safely — slow down to 20 miles per hour below the posted speed limit (so 25 mph, for example, in a 45 mph zone).
Tome was killed along Route 15 in Franklin Township, near Clear Spring Road south of Dillsburg. Then-40-year-old Joanna Seibert was convicted, eventually serving a year in prison.
Speaking Tuesday — her voice shaking, tears running down her face — Karen Reever characterized Seibert’s actions: “Putting on make-up, on the phone, speeding, late for work…. She was doing everything other than paying attention to the road.”
At her sentencing hearing, Seibert apologized to Tome’s family and said she thought about him every day.
