An Amish buggy travels down Old Philadelphia Pike in Bird-in-Hand, Pa., Dec. 23, 2020. (Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com)
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill requiring Amish buggies and other animal-drawn vehicles to display a yellow flashing light while driving on public streets.
House Bill 30, co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Darrell Kick of Loudonville, and Scott Wiggam, of Wooster, is intended to reduce the crashes between Amish buggies and modern vehicles.
There were 120 such crashes in 2020, 60% of which occurred during the daytime, according to earlier committee testimony from Wiggam, whose district includes a major Amish community.
The law now requires a light mounted on the top-most portion of the vehicle’s rear, visible from the sides and lit at all hours. Current law requires buggies to have two red lights on the back and a white light on the front, but they only have to be lit after dusk.
Two of the largest Amish settlements in North America are in Ohio -- one in the Holmes County area with 37,770 people and another in the Geauga County area with 19,420 people, according to 2021 estimates from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.
As part of the committee review process, unidentified members of the “Amish community” also submitted 27 pages of written testimony supporting the bill.
But some of the handful of “no” votes the bill got came from Republican lawmakers representing the Geauga County area.
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