SACRAMENTO -- Two state lawmakers say they will reintroduce a bill Monday to regulate high-speed police chases. Called Kristie's Law -- after a 15-year-old Chico girl killed by a driver trying to escape police in 2002 -- the law would establish tougher penalties for drivers involved in high-speed pursuits and also put in guidelines for police when such chases are appropriate.

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Video On Demand: Sara Sidner On Legislation To Reduce High-Speed Pursuits

On any given day in California, a television station helicopter hovers over a speeding car that pinballs through traffic on the freeway below with police cars in hot pursuit.

More and more often, however, this staple of television news and police procedure has brought death and serious injuries. According to the California Highway Patrol, the number of chases has grown by the hundreds each of the last three years for which statistics are available: 5,895 in 2001; 6,337 in 2002; 7,171 in 2003.

Fifty-one people died in 2003 as a result, or nearly one each week. Of the dead, 18 were not involved in the pursuit, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Last month, University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Jie Wang joined the list of the seriously injured after a motorist fleeing an Albany, Calif., police officer ran a red light and crashed into Wang's car. The 24-year-old Wang remains in a coma.

California's numbers consistently far exceed any other state. Compared to the 51 California deaths in 2003, Texas had 33 including nine innocents; North Carolina had 23 deaths, eight of them uninvolved motorists; Florida had 21 deaths, just one of an innocent motorist.

While some cities including Los Angeles have limited chases, Florida and Mississippi last year enacted laws boosting penalties for fleeing drivers, similar to what California law enforcement is now proposing this year as the California Legislature is set to start again attempts to change the way law enforcement pursue potential criminals.

Law enforcement groups want to increase penalties for fleeing drivers, while a bipartisan group of legislators is pushing a proposal that would include penalties for police who recklessly pursue drivers.

"I want something that is actually going to save lives," said state Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, who said at least 35 people have died since his bill that would have limited police immunity in accidents from high-speed chases was defeated last year.

"Probably the worst way to catch someone is by chasing them," Aanestad said. "We already have some of the strictest penalties in the nation. ... When people flee, it wasn't on their mind."

The police-sponsored bill would promote educating drivers about the stiffer criminal penalties and that they -- not the police officer -- are liable if anyone else is injured or killed. And it would make bystanders eligible for monetary compensation from the state's victims' fund.

But law enforcement will adamantly oppose stripping away officers' legal immunity, said California State Sheriff's Association Legislative Director Nick Warner and California Police Chiefs Association President Bill Brown.

Since 1987, police have had what a state appeals court in 2002 termed a "get-out-of-liability-free" law even if police violate their own department's pursuit policy.

"We have been challenged by the court of appeals: 'You, Legislature, go back and fix this,"' said Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who is teaming with Aanestad in a bipartisan reform effort.

But Brown, a 27-year veteran and police chief in Lompoc the last 10 years, said ending police immunity now would "pass the liability on to the police and ultimately to the taxpayer, rather than to the individual who is really responsible."

That would essentially end all police pursuits, Brown said, encouraging suspects to flee.

Aanestad is promising to craft a bill in cooperation with law enforcement, national experts and families of innocent victims of high-speed pursuits.

Romero is co-sponsoring that bill but also carrying the police proposal as "a beginning point of discussion."

"I think there is much that needs to be changed," she said. "I want to see as much teeth as possible; I want there to be accountability," even it might be politically unrealistic to end police immunity.

Aanestad is naming his bill after Kristie Priano, a 15-year-old Chico honor student who was killed in January 2002 when her family's minivan was struck by an unlicensed 15-year-old who took her mother's car without permission. Candy Priano argues police knew where the fleeing driver lived, so there was no need for the pursuit that killed her daughter.

"I blame the people who flee. (But) people who flee do not care about anyone's safety, so the burden of protecting innocent bystanders by necessity falls on the police," Priano said in remarks prepared for a news conference Monday before a Public Safety Committee information hearing Wednesday.