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Parents of alum Matt Wilhelm to speak at Uni this week about "Matt's Law"
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Sunday, Jan. 21, 2007, The OG, news
1999 Uni graduate Matt Wilhelm, whose parents are advocating a law that would ban cell-phone use while driving, died after he was struck by a distracted driver on Sept. 2.
(photo: Matt's Law Coalition)
CHUCK AND GLORIA Wilhelm, whose son was killed in early September by a driver downloading ring tones, will address Uni students on Thursday about their advocacy of a new law to ban cell-phone use while driving.
The Wilhelms, who live in Bourbonnais, will speak to teacher DeeDee Wright's freshman health class during sixth period.
Chuck and Gloria are the parents of Matt Wilhelm, a 25-year-old Uni alumnus who died Sept. 8, six days after suffering traumatic injuries when a car hit him while he was riding his bike on Illinois 130 in rural Urbana.
Matt graduated from Uni in 1999 and went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois.
In August he began working full time as an engineer for Caterpillar in Peoria. Despite wearing a safety helmet at the time of his accident, he never regained consciousness after he was struck Sept. 2.
The driver, 19-year-old Urbana resident Jennifer Stark, admitted she was downloading mobile ring tones onto her phone at the time of the accident rather than paying attention to the road. Her distraction took her car off the road so much that although Matt was biking four feet away from the right edge of the road, Stark hit him with the driver's side of her car.
In late November, Sixth Circuit Court Associate Judge Richard Klaus sentenced Stark to six months of nonreporting probation, a $1,000 fine, and traffic school — the maximum sentence possible under current state law. Klaus said he was “appalled” by Stark's actions and took into consideration that Stark had already accumulated two speeding tickets and one traffic violation for not stopping at a stop sign in the 17 months preceding the accident.
Unsatisfied by a sentence that many felt did not do justice to the crime and ignored the greater issue of distraction as the cause of the accident, Matt's parents were spurred into action.
“This is an issue that is ready to explode,” Gloria told the Kankakee Daily Journal.
And explode it has.
The Uni lunch visit is only a continuation of the tireless work the Wilhelms have been doing in support of a proposed “Negligent Vehicular Homicide” law, or “Matt's Law,” as it has come to be called.
If passed, the law could result in jail time for drivers involved in accidents due to technological distractions such as cellular devices and iPods. The proposed legislation is similar to laws that 35 other states have adopted.
The Wilhelms have been meeting with legislators in Springfield and have even created a MySpace account for the cause, with “friends” such as Barack Obama and The Lance Armstrong Foundation.
On Dec. 11 and 12, Chuck and Gloria visited drivers education classes at Champaign Central and Champaign Centennial high schools to talk about the dangers of distracted driving.
In a thank-you letter published in The News-Gazette, the Wilhelms said they “were very encouraged” to continue their work and praised the students for being “very receptive, extremely attentive, and respectful.”
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