Written by KPRC 2 Houston is reporting: on the Lisa Torry Smith Act, which will take effect on September 1, 2021:
Not many days after Lisa Torry Smith died in 2017, after family members learned it was not a crime in Texas to drive into someone in a crosswalk, they decided the law needed to change.
About four years later, a new Texas law in her name will go into effect, which makes it a crime, punishable by fines and up to two years in prison, to hit and cause injury to a person in a crosswalk.
“We worked really hard on this, and it was the right thing to do,” said Smith’s mother, Elaine Brooks, in an interview. “The right people were put in our path to get it done.”
Newly-elected Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton wrote the bill and was instrumental in its passage, Brooks said. State Representative Ron Reynolds (D) and State Senator Joan Huffman (R) sponsored the bill.