The Ohio House has approved a bill to establish a program that would alert police if they are dealing with a person with a communication disability.
The voluntary program would be handled by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The BMV would include the information in the database that police use to look up license-plate information.
Drivers with disabilities would have to submit a form with their physician’s signature.
Republican State Rep. Scott Wiggam of Wooster is one of the bill’s sponsors.
“I actually had a phone call from a mother who has a 16-year-old who got their driver’s license, and they were on the spectrum of autism, and she was concerned. She wanted the officer to have some sort of information that her son, if he were driving, that he would have a communication disorder.”
Wiggam says that the bill covers communication disabilities ranging from autism to deafness.
