Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation by Edward Humes
Authors: Edward Humes
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reject the plea bargain but accepted a slightly modified deal, hastily worked out on the spot: one day in jail plus thirty days of home confinement and a requirement that Hinkemeyer pass a driving course in order to keep her license.
These would be the toughest sanctions imposed this day anywhere in the nation for fatal driving, other than cases involving intoxication. A crash earlier that day in Auburn Hills, Michigan, was far more typical. A thirty-three-year-old machinist, apparently in reaction to erratic driving by another car southbound on Interstate 75, lost control of his Ford Escort, struck the concrete median wall, and came to a stop in the left lane. The disabled car was then struck by a Chevy Malibu. The driver of the Ford, John Steele, who had recently purchased a house he was immersed in renovating, suffered critical injuries and died three weeks later from complications from cerebral trauma. Eyewitnesses thought a black Ford SUV had clipped Steeleâs car and fled after causing the deadly sequence of events. After police issued a plea through the media for additional witnesses, the driver of the mysterious SUV came forward. Investigators determined that vehicle had no physical contact with Steeleâs car after allâit was just a close call. The SUV driverâs consequence: a ticket for erratic driving.
Even more typical: a driver in Conroe, Texas, at 6:30 that morning turned left in front of a young motorcyclist going 55 miles an hour in the opposite direction on busy State Highway 105. There was no way for the biker to avoid slamming into the car that suddenly veered into his path. Seventeen-year-old Trenton Fortune, on his way to meet his girlfriend for breakfast before they went to their high school together, died from the impact. The driver of the car was blamed for the crash in police reports for failing to yield the right of way, but no criminal charges were filed.
Thereâs an old joke told around the California Highway Patrol: If you want to get away with killing someone , use a car.
Itâs not a very funny jokeâjust a literally true one. As long as a driver is sober, causing a crash that leads to injury or death is rarely treated as a crime, and rarely leads to meaningful sanctions, such as taking away someoneâs driving privileges (although such a policy might have limited impact, as a 2008 study found: one in five fatal collisions involve a driver with no valid license). 6 Erratic driving may cause a chain reaction leading to hospitals and graves, but such arguably negligent or reckless conduct is almost always regarded as an ordinary traffic violation or a simple âaccident.â On the rare occasions when prosecutors file formal criminal charges such as vehicular homicide, they often end up reduced to misdemeanors or traffic violations. Case in point: a twenty-year-old North Dakota woman, accused in 2014 of using her phone while driving, was allegedly so inattentive to the road that she rear-ended another car at 80 miles per hour without ever braking. An eighty-nine-year-old great-grandmother in the other car died. The case against the driver started as a stiff felony prosecution but ended up plea bargained down to a misdemeanor, with the young woman receiving a year of unsupervised probation and a guarantee that her record would be expunged if she finished the year without incident. 7
In other cases, the lenient treatment is a function of a system deliberately constructed to excuse auto violence, as in the 2013 death in New York City of three-year-old Allison Liao, run down as she walked hand in hand with her grandmother in a crosswalk with the right of way on Main Street in Flushing. The Queens district attorney refused to prosecute the driver of the SUV that killed the toddler because he wasnât drunk or on drugs at the time; the driver was given a pair of traffic tickets instead. And even those were tossed out by a callous and
These would be the toughest sanctions imposed this day anywhere in the nation for fatal driving, other than cases involving intoxication. A crash earlier that day in Auburn Hills, Michigan, was far more typical. A thirty-three-year-old machinist, apparently in reaction to erratic driving by another car southbound on Interstate 75, lost control of his Ford Escort, struck the concrete median wall, and came to a stop in the left lane. The disabled car was then struck by a Chevy Malibu. The driver of the Ford, John Steele, who had recently purchased a house he was immersed in renovating, suffered critical injuries and died three weeks later from complications from cerebral trauma. Eyewitnesses thought a black Ford SUV had clipped Steeleâs car and fled after causing the deadly sequence of events. After police issued a plea through the media for additional witnesses, the driver of the mysterious SUV came forward. Investigators determined that vehicle had no physical contact with Steeleâs car after allâit was just a close call. The SUV driverâs consequence: a ticket for erratic driving.
Even more typical: a driver in Conroe, Texas, at 6:30 that morning turned left in front of a young motorcyclist going 55 miles an hour in the opposite direction on busy State Highway 105. There was no way for the biker to avoid slamming into the car that suddenly veered into his path. Seventeen-year-old Trenton Fortune, on his way to meet his girlfriend for breakfast before they went to their high school together, died from the impact. The driver of the car was blamed for the crash in police reports for failing to yield the right of way, but no criminal charges were filed.
Thereâs an old joke told around the California Highway Patrol: If you want to get away with killing someone , use a car.
Itâs not a very funny jokeâjust a literally true one. As long as a driver is sober, causing a crash that leads to injury or death is rarely treated as a crime, and rarely leads to meaningful sanctions, such as taking away someoneâs driving privileges (although such a policy might have limited impact, as a 2008 study found: one in five fatal collisions involve a driver with no valid license). 6 Erratic driving may cause a chain reaction leading to hospitals and graves, but such arguably negligent or reckless conduct is almost always regarded as an ordinary traffic violation or a simple âaccident.â On the rare occasions when prosecutors file formal criminal charges such as vehicular homicide, they often end up reduced to misdemeanors or traffic violations. Case in point: a twenty-year-old North Dakota woman, accused in 2014 of using her phone while driving, was allegedly so inattentive to the road that she rear-ended another car at 80 miles per hour without ever braking. An eighty-nine-year-old great-grandmother in the other car died. The case against the driver started as a stiff felony prosecution but ended up plea bargained down to a misdemeanor, with the young woman receiving a year of unsupervised probation and a guarantee that her record would be expunged if she finished the year without incident. 7
In other cases, the lenient treatment is a function of a system deliberately constructed to excuse auto violence, as in the 2013 death in New York City of three-year-old Allison Liao, run down as she walked hand in hand with her grandmother in a crosswalk with the right of way on Main Street in Flushing. The Queens district attorney refused to prosecute the driver of the SUV that killed the toddler because he wasnât drunk or on drugs at the time; the driver was given a pair of traffic tickets instead. And even those were tossed out by a callous and
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