Dear Friends,

My name is Patricia Pena and I am a 29-year-old mother with an empty lap and a dreadfully aching heart. I have to tell you about my baby. Her name was Morgan Lee Pena and she was two and a half years old. She loved reading stories, playing in her backyard, taking walks in her wagon and lying on the couch with her daddy. She was his pride and joy, the light of our lives. She was everything good in our lives. My husband and I worked and saved and waited for seven years to have Morgan Lee. I knew I wanted to be home to raise my family, so we moved into our new home and I resigned from my job. We were finally able to make it solely on my husband's income. Everything we had worked so hard for had been realized. We had a happy marriage; a beautiful, happy baby girl; and a "new" home. My last day at work was Friday, October 30, 1999. Morgan was killed three days later.

It was Monday, November 1, 1999; we had gone food shopping that day. Morgan sat in the back of the cart and sang the whole way through the store. Singing and singing, to the point that people where smiling at me, saying, "Boy, you have a singer on your hands." I just looked at her and smiled. A very warm feeling came over me and I thought to myself, Wow, what a happy kid. I just love her so much.

The next day I decided to go visit my sister, who lives just a few minutes away. Morgan loved playing with her little cousin Christian Norbert, who was four years old. Morgan thought he was just the funniest thing she'd ever seen, and he'd entertain her as long as she wanted. She'd break out into fits of giggles until she got the hiccups.

It was nearing Morgan's nap time. Should I take her home for a nap, or let her go to gym class with Christian? She held on to my sister for dear life, but I really just wanted to take her home, so we left for home. Two minutes later I turned around to see my baby bleeding from her head. There was glass everywhere and she wasn't breathing.

A man whose attention was not on the road or on the vehicle he was driving, but instead on the phone call he was making, ran a stop sign at 45 mph, broadsided my vehicle and killed Morgan as she sat in her car seat.

OH, MY GOD, NOT MY BABY. I just started screaming.

I spent the night at Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania. They said that Morgan had the worst head injury they had ever seen on a child her age. I watched my baby die right in front of my eyes.

In the following days the assistant district attorney informed me that the other driver would not be charged in the accident. The most they could do was give him a $50 fine and two traffic tickets, which he would receive in the mail. The points incurred are not even enough to warrant a suspension on his license. The DA said simply, "There is no law in the state of Pennsylvania that punishes ordinary negligence behind the wheel when the result is death." My husband and I were outraged. He would have gotten in more trouble if he had just threatened to kill my daughter; since he really did kill her and blamed it on his cell phone, he walks away. It's all perfectly legal.

Several days after burying my baby, filled with a pain no one should ever have to endure, my state senator, Joe Conti, paid me a visit. He was genuinely upset. He expressed his condolences and said that he has had proposed legislation sitting in the Senate Transportation Committee since August, legislation that could have saved Morgan's life. It was Bill 1085 and it would restrict the use of cellular phones while driving. He said he has met with the top five wireless communication companies on three separate occasions since the spring of 1999. Initially he told them that he would back off the legislation if they would commit to six months' worth of educating drivers. They refused. In meeting after meeting they refused to participate in any type of consumer educational awareness program. Senator Conti said that he now regrets not being more strident in his dealings with these companies over that period of time. I gave him a picture of Morgan Lee, which he took to the floor of the Pennsylvania Senate.

It was then that I decided to do some research. My husband and I were cell phone owners and users, and I have to admit we were quite uneducated consumers. We had never done any research before we bought this product, as we might have done before buying a new washer. We just jumped on the "everybody's got one" bandwagon and took off. Well, we were astonished at what we found. Particularly in looking at the owner's manual of our own cell phone. It stated clearly on the first page under For Your Safety: "Don't use a hand-held phone while driving; park the vehicle first." What!! But that is what we bought, a hand-held phone!! We never heard that before. What we had heard were these companies offering "a free call from your car to the local radio station by just dialing *610." How can they quietly recommend the safe use of their product, yet very publicly endorse exactly the opposite? Then we found a study done by the University of Toronto published in the New England Journal of Medicine and stating that they had found a quadrupling effect of cell phone use on the accident rate--equivalent to driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit. The research was piling up. We quickly realized that, like the rest of the public, we lacked a meaningful awareness of the dangers of driving while using a cellular phone. I instantly felt the overwhelming need to tell everyone what I had discovered.

I have not stopped since. I knew I could not let my baby's horrific death go unanswered. I now knew what God wanted me to do. I was to speak up and do everything in my power to prevent this from happening ever again. We created a Web site, www.geocities.com/morganleepena, and a flier in an effort to create public awareness. I started calling, mailing, e-mailing people. I spoke to reporters and anyone else who would listen. I also was sharing the research I compiled with local lawmakers and the media. Then, within less than two months, the local municipality where the accident occurred became the second municipality in the nation to pass a law banning the use of hand-held phones while driving.

The cell phone companies took notice. They came out in the newspapers, saying we don't need another law, we need education, education, education. To that I say: Put up or shut up. Their outright refusal in meetings with Senator Conti to do any sort of education is one refusal they will live to regret. Their other favorite argument against further legislation is that we already have laws for this. Well, if you think a $50 fine and two tickets in the mail is a sufficient consequence for his actions then, yes, they are right: the existing laws are adequate. I simply do not agree. And if I hear the ridiculous analogy between eating hamburgers, putting on lipstick and using a cell phone one more time, I am going to bust an artery. You can't compare statistics like 80 million to 100 million cell phone users (with 40,000 new subscribers per day), 85 percent of them using the phone occasionally while driving and 27 percent spending at least half their driving time on the phone. I defy anyone to come up with evidence of that kind of proliferation of lipstick-wielding drivers! (And if they can, tell them to start their own damn campaign!) With the exponential growth of such a dangerous activity, I can't see how we can continue to ignore this.

I'm not going to ignore it. I tell people that I have a new full-time job now, and it's one that I'll never quit.

Sincerely,

Patricia N. Pena
patriciapena@msn.com

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