Amish community in court over traffic violation

The Schwartzentruber Amish community of Pennsylvania forbids the use of electricity, motor vehicles and running water.

But its ultra-conservative members have been catapulted into modern-day America's culture of litigation because they refuse to fit reflective safety triangles to their horse-drawn buggies.

The 80 Schwartzentrubers are a familiar sight in the Allegheny mountains, but to motorists using the winding roads after dark they are frequently an all-too sudden sight.

Their failure to use the orange triangles, which state law requires on every vehicle that travels at under 25mph, and their refusal to pay $90 (£60) in on-the-spot fines, has brought them to court in the town of Ebensburg to defend themselves against 24 traffic violation charges.

To them it is a fundamental matter of religious freedom. They argue that the triangles represent faith in man-made technologies over God. Last year one of their number spent several days in jail rather than pay a $10 fine.

"Police patrol these rural areas, and if they come across an infraction, they tag you. They went through the warning system, but now it's loggerheads," Heath Long, the deputy district attorney for Cambria county in Pennsylvania, said yesterday.

Asked if the lack of triangles had caused accidents, Heath Long, the deputy district attorney for Cambria county, said yesterday: "There certainly have been near-misses."

Schwartzentruber Amish in other states have reached agreement with the local authorities to use reflective grey tape, which is permitted by their rules, instead of brightly coloured reflective panels.

"The Amish do not want to jeopardise public safety," Wit Walczak, of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the community, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Their objection is to this particular symbol."

The Amish are scattered across 22 US states and parts of Canada, and adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible and to the Ordnung, an unwritten set of rules which forbids them to adopt most modern technologies.