Lawmakers Frustrated After Drivers Education Safety Bill Honoring Late Teen Fails In Committee

A bipartisan bill aiming to make driver's education safer failed in a Senate committee Monday afternoon, despite overwhelming support in the House.  

The bill's authors said they are frustrated but have not given up hope.  

House Bill 1616 authored by House Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols, R-OKC, Rep. Forest Bennett, D-OKC and Sen. Jessica Garvin, R-Duncan, is named after 15-year-old Hope Shaffer.  

In the winter of 2020, Shaffer was a backseat passenger in a driver’s ed car, when another student driving the vehicle stopped at a yield sign while exiting interstate 240, causing a truck to crash into the vehicle.  

“We don’t want anyone else to have to go through what we have gone through,” Hope’s father Nick Shaffer said.  

“She was just a really sweet girl,” her mother Charla Shafer said. “Beautiful girl. She loved ballet. She loved people. She loved children. She just had a really big heart.”  

The Hope Shaffer Act says a student driver cannot be behind the wheel while another student is riding as a passenger unless a waver has been signed by a parent.  

Despite the bill clearing the House 91-to1 last month, it unexpectedly failed Monday in a Senate Committee 5-to-5.  

“This bill may not prevent another death, but it definitely put that decision in the parents’ hands. It enables them to say, ‘yes or no I don’t want my child in a vehicle with an unlicensed driver,’” Garvin said.  

The Shaffers said the tragedy they experienced losing their daughter not only changed their lives forever, but also affected the student driver and adult driving instructor who survived the crash.   

“It’s not fair to student drivers to have that kind of responsibility, and then had to live with what the results might be from an accident like that,” Charla said.  

Bennett and Garvin said they are keeping hope alive that the bill may be reconsidered in the Public Safety Committee or the language from the bill will be inserted into another piece of legislation.  

Meanwhile, over the past two years since the fatal crash, the Shaffers have started a non-profit called Dancing for Eternity, helping provide scholarships to students who may not be able to the arts.