Posted on 10/22/2003 1:20:00 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
EBENSBURG – A conservative Amish sect has won the right – at least for now – to use gray reflective tape on the back of their horse-drawn buggies to warn of a slow-moving vehicle.
A three-judge panel of the Superior Court, in a 2-1 decision, ruled that state law requiring bright orange triangles is unconstitutional as applied to the Swartzentruber Amish.
The conservative sect has families in the Ebensburg and Carrolltown areas of Cambria County.
Requiring them to use bright orange violates their religious freedom, the two state judges said in a 36-page opinion.
But District Attorney David Tulowitzki said yesterday he will appeal, citing the state´s overriding interest in public safety on the highway.
“The majority opinion basically said we didn´t prove the compelling issue of safety. We disagree because people are getting killed and injured as a result of not having the triangle on the buggies,” Tulowitzki said in an interview at his courthouse office.
But the ruling was hailed by Pittsburgh attorney Donna Doblick, representing the Amish, as keeping alive Pennsylvania´s founding principles dating to William Penn: “Not to tread lightly on individual´s rights, the right of religious freedom.”
Doblick, in a telephone interview from her Pittsburgh office, added, “There´s no evidence anywhere that the devices the Amish are using are less safe than (triangles).”
The state panel did not overturn the convictions outright. Rather, the case was remanded to county court for further consideration.
But Tulowitzki thinks the prosecution did prove its case and decided instead to appeal rather than go back before Judge Timothy Creany. He will either ask the full Superior Court – 15 judges – to reconsider the ruling or petition the state Supreme Court for review.
The Old Order Amish say the triangles offend their religious beliefs. They say the garish color violates their simple lifestyle and that displaying it would show they rely on it rather than on God for their safety.
Members have been using red lanterns and outlining the rear of their buggies with gray tape as safety precautions.
“The decision will be a welcome relief to our clients who wanted to get the same rights they have elsewhere,” Doblick said. She said that she would be driving later in the day to Cambria County to advise her clients – who do not have telephones – of the decision.
A number of other states where the members of the Swartzentruber Amish sect live grant an exemption to the requirement to display the triangles.
Members of the Pennsylvania sect – who moved here about six years ago from Ohio – have repeatedly been ticketed by state and local police for failing to display the triangle on their buggies.
The decision involves a joint appeal of 20 members of the community who received a total of 27 tickets. They initially were convicted by district justices and filed an appeal to county court.
In June 2002, Creany, saying that traveling safety is paramount on Pennsylvania roads, ruled against the Amish. He upheld the convictions and fined them $95 each, plus court costs.
The state judges determined the prosecution had failed to show that the religious objectors´ conduct poses a demonstrable threat of harm to the state´s interests.
The majority judges determined that, even though the state´s expert concluded the triangle is the most visible form of identification during daylight, prosecutors did not show that fewer accidents resulted among those using the emblem than among those who did not.
Without that comparative information, Creany had only a “scant basis on which to conclude that the emblem achieves a decrease in the rate of collision that the reflective tape cannot achieve,” the judges ruled.
“Because the evidence fails to substantiate a threat posed by the Swartzentrubers´ failure to display the SMV emblem, we cannot find that (state) interest (in highway safety) sufficiently compelling to justify intrusion on the Swartzentrubers´ sincerely held religious beliefs,” the majority said.
Judge Zoran Popovich, in a 10-page dissent, said he agreed with Creany that the state´s interest in safety is not met by permitting the Swartzentrubers to apply the gray reflective tape and a red lantern to their buggies.
The state´s expert concluded the tape is not as visible to motorists approaching from the rear of the buggies during daylight, when most of the buggies are on the roads, Popovich said.
Do a web search on Amish politics... nothing.
Sounds like one of Liberace's sequinned suits.
I can't picture them going for that, day-glo orange is simpler, IMHO.
3M Scotchlite 2" Reflective Striping
Two-inch width of striping helps to fully customize your professional vehicle. Striping comes in easy-to-handle 2" x 150' rolls. Rolls are ideal for fleets with multiple vehicle styles.
It's used on law enforcement vehicles and ambulances, and the effect is uncanny. Black in indirect light, brilliant white in direct headlight beams.
Wunderbar. My entire neighborhood is full of those!
No. Microscopic retroreflectors. You see this stuff on firemen's coats, road crew vests, highway signs, spots on running shoes, etc. It comes in various colours: day-glo orange, red, green, yellow, neutral gray. Under diffuse lighting it usually has a matte finish appearance. Direct, point source lighting is always reflected back at the source. You can make a macroscopic version of the crystals with three mirrors; it's called a "corner cube". Shine a flashlight into it from any direction and the light comes right back at you. Search "alltheweb.com" for "retroreflector" or "corner-cube" ... you'll get the basic physics.
If they did, I gotta start working on my Rector to get us signed up. Lets face it, if you took the money you now dump into Social Security and instead put it into a collective run by your Church, you could have better benefits, more security, and enough money left over to run the whole operation and buy the Rector a Cadillac every year!
I drive through Amish country every day. Now that it's gonna be dark on the drive home again, I hope I don't run across any of these guys. Because they are not just endangering themselves, they endanger drivers - the buggies are hard enough to see at night, and the instinct upon suddenly encountering a hard-to-see buggy at night is to try to swerve to avoid them - right into oncoming traffic, as the roads are old and often sunken down below ground level.
As far as I'm concerned, the more reflective surfaces, the better, and most buggies are heavily festooned with reflectors of red and orange, along with flashing lights. I can marginally agree that the SMV triangle is not all that important - but they also wish to use gray tape instead of orange tape which is much more visible.
After Senate approval in July, the signing of the bill by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 13, 1965, made it official and canceled tax accounts of some 15,000 Amish people amounting to nearly $250,000."
This is a slow-moving vehicle sign and should be mounted on all farm machinery, including road construction equipment and animal-drawn vehicles. The sign should signal motor vehicle drivers to slow down. Vehicles displaying the slow-moving vehicle sign are prohibited by law to go faster than 25 mph
Dang, I'm gonna grow a beard and get a straw hat. Just pretend that my SUV is a buggy.
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