Obviously this is his fault, but given he's only 19 this sucks for everyone - even with him getting a lighter sentence. This will stay with him his whole life. And it's probably a combination of the area and how unfriendly it is to pedestrians, an issue with line of sight, and night now falling earlier. This is definitely the right place to post this. Even in an area around a university with heavy foot traffic there's always some close calls, and like people said in the article, some people get behind the wheel and think they are entitled, using it to dominate a situation when it's easier and safer to just let people walk by. Cars suck. Many drivers suck too.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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The driver was charged with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle. That's a special section of law for killing by car, and it's far too lenient. North Carolina has laws on involuntary manslaughter they're not charged with.
The problem with explaining away the light sentence is that we have laws to make accidental killing by car OK, but accidental killing by any other method is not. That's not justice as it's neither fair nor equitable.
This driver should be in jail for 1 to 3 years as laid out in North Carolina's involuntary manslaughter code.
Who cares if he's only 19? He just murdered someone by his own will. He needs to be locked up at a minimum
The higher charge would be some degree of manslaughter, not murder, unless you know of evidence that he planned to do this.
Involuntary manslaughter doesn't require premeditation or planning.
I'm sure he got in his car and thought: "Today's a good day to murder someone". Or maybe you mean he thought: "I see someone crossing the street, let's murder her".
There's no mention of ill intent. There is mention of bad lighting and bad road design. Seems like the guy is guilty of not being extra careful enough in a risky road situation, but why was there a risky road situation near a university in the first place?
When you choose to drive unsafely, you choose to drive with intent to kill.
The first thing investigators should do is look into the circumstances of the crash. Which seems to have been done in this case, but not satisfactorily.
There is mention of bad lighting and bad road design
The absolute right thing to do here is to fix the bad lightning immediately and the road design ASAP. Additionally, the plans need to be reviewed and anyone who signed them off should be asked why they did so.
In my vision of a just world, there isn't a need for jail time as long as there's a good chance at reform. The driver has a few mitigating circumstances going for him: wasn't under influence, wasn't speeding. Although they did fail to yield at a sign according to the article.
That being said, losing your licence for at least 4 years seems appropriate. Of course, after such a relatively long time of not driving, they should retake the test because they'll lose their abilties since driving a car in traffic isn't like riding a bike in a secluded area.
Another thing that should serve as an aggrevating circumstance is the car. If it was a monster truck, the person should quite obviously rot in jail regardless (which I doubt is the case here). For SUVs, lenghten the loss of licence in milder cases and do jail time for the worse ones.
If the design is found to be faulty not because the engineers were lazy or ignorant but because of a lack of funds, then a portion (say, 20%) of the county's yearly budget should be appropriated and spent on road improvements. First at the scene, but also as a systemic overhaul elsewhere in the jurisdiction.
The 20% is on a per-grave accident (caused by a lack of funding) basis. Capped at 80% yearly, but the remainder gets pushed onto subsequent year(s) in full). That seems like a good way of keeping councils accountable and fixing damage even if they aren't.
The solution to road deaths isn't throwing people in jail. Sure, road "accidental" road manslaughter punsihments are lenient, but such deaths are always going to happen because tha's what happens when you mix foot and car traffic at scale in almost any way. Especially in the way the US is doing it, although all other places have their own traffic death problems as well, so it unfortubately isn't a solved problem.
Review, educate, fix and improve infrastracture to hopefully prevent. Jail time should be reserved for the most heinous cases (DUI, deliberate slaughter and reckless driving). Giving anyone unfortunate enough to run someone over won't fix bad infrastructure. It also won't get us anywhere near 0% road deaths.
I believe jail time should be used not especially sparingly, but instead that prisons should be reduced in security and allow external jobs for low level offenses. Some people really do respond to negative enforcement, and having that in a humane way allows you to sentence people for lower level offenses, creating greater deterrence while still allowing them to continue parts of their life and importantly their jobs even through the punishment.
But traffic accidents against cycles are usually due to reckless driving. A driver is driving a multi ton machine, it is their responsibility to look out and be careful. Hitting someone when you fail to do so, is murder and should be treated as such. Reckless driving is driving with intent to kill.
Importantly, enforcement rates matter even more so than the actual punishment. No matter how strong the punishment, people will freely do it if they get off Scott free, so enforcing the law and holding reckless drivers accountable even without hitting people is an important FIRST step in stopping reckless driving. That means real punishment for running stop signs and failure to use turn signals, etc. but that requires police reform.
Throwing them in jail doesn't solve it. But it can make an example of them, and potentially reduce future bad drivers.
I’ve been doing a lot of walking around town since pandemic and it’s those rolling stops that are the most frightening. I don’t know what happened here, but. ….
Say you’re crossing a side road. Someone coming up the Main Street can’t really see you. Once they turn you’re right there. Coming to an actual stop at the red light or stop sign can make all the difference for whether they can see and avoid.
If you didn’t stop, you are responsible for an unsafe choice that killed someone. That shouldn’t be only a misdemeanor
Unhinged take, you clearly don't even know what will means. It's a tragic accident
Calling it a tragic accident pretends it was not wholly avoidable if a driver was driving safely
I feel like someone needs to make the simpsons bus meme, with the sign reading how blaming and increasing the punishment for the individuals with systemic problems isn't going to solve the issue.
@canihasaccount I hope all the other faculty at NC State gang up on the civil engineering department to demand changes in what and how they teach. NCDOT is a terrible, deeply anti-pedestrian state DOT that does everything it can to prevent meaningful safety improvements and the bulk of their workforce comes from NC State.
This is such a good point. Our streets are dangerous by design. You only can have a safe experience walking in a location built before cars were the norm.
A good friend of mine from NC started "Walk Safe Monroe" he's been advocating for traffic studies on dangerous roads and has gotten sidewalks and speed bumps installed. They won't change unless you make them change! He is focused on his own town now but he would love it if others opened more chapters in other towns.
Encourage them to make a website so people across the country can make their own chapters per town and city too. It takes us all to make sure we lose nobody else to that.
@Jollyllama That's important and needed grassroots work, but it would be made a lot easier if universities reformed their civil engineering curriculum to reflect scientific understanding of the harms caused by promoting cars and trucks as the primary modes of transportation so that advocates didn't have to start by providing basic education to alleged professional experts who have been granted a degree that gives them power to rearrange communities.
That's why in less insane countries, the car is always at fault when it comes to accidents with "weaker" street/traffic participants such as bikes and pedestrians
(Such countries also have proper driver training, after this a young person would have to retake the exam probably or at least take part in "correctional lessions", if they didn't have their license rewoked for a long while in the first place, but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
I’d take all the people who want car-centric infrastructure a lot more seriously if they put any effort into it.
Not a single word on whether the car was an SUV. The likelihood it was is quite high, sedans are configured to not cause death in these events.
edit: typo
It's in the US so it's almost obligatory some oversized "my penis really is big, I promise you!" bucket
and it was a neighborhood street, and apparently the driver was turning. Probably got pushed under by a high bumper of an SUV or truck
I almost got hit by a garbage truck yesterday at a crosswalk. The guy couldn't see a giant orange vest with reflectors during the middle of the day, I was walking my bike to the sidewalk and the guy didn't slow dowm
This is horrendous to hear. I feel like everyone should carry bricks at every intersection!
At the point motorists will speed up to make a point there is a societal attitude problem.