Family that lost son in crash is hopeful Gov. Cuomo will sign law mandating airbags in used cars
By Tony Aiello
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NEW YORK (WCBS) — A Rockland County family hopes Gov. Andrew Cuomo will sign a law banning the sale of used cars if the airbags are missing or don’t work.
Their effort is partly because the bill honors their son, but mostly because they believe it will save lives, CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported Monday.
His picture is on mom’s pendant and on dad’s tie, and now his name is on a bill sitting on the governor’s desk.
Anthony Amoros died in 2013 at age 18, after crashing his recently purchased used car on a windy stretch of Thiells Mount Ivy Road. His family said Amoros had no idea the airbag had been removed.
“He assumed there was an airbag in there, and of course, sadly and tragically, he learned that there wasn’t at the time of the accident,” Al Amoros said.
When the family began working with legislators, the idea was to craft a bill requiring used car dealers to simply disclose to buyers if the airbag was missing or not functioning. Sometimes they are not replaced after deployment or have been stolen.
Eventually, advocates decided it would be simpler and safer to just add airbags to the list of required equipment in used vehicles, such as seatbelts.
“You have to have rearview mirrors, so things like that. So at the end of the day, what we did statutorily was add airbags to that regulatory section,” Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski Jr. said.
Zebrowski said just as the industry opposed the original 1990s mandate requiring air bags in all passenger vehicles, it opposed this bill, too.
However, it passed the Legislature easily and now, after years of effort, only needs the governor’s signature to become law.
“Great accomplishments like this airbag law are performed not by strength but by determination,” Al Amoros said.
The family said of all the ways it has honored their son, this law is the one that matters most.
The governor’s office reviews all legislation before deciding whether to sign it into the law. It did not respond when asked if it plans to sign Anthony’s law.
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