More blood on the highway: a 72-year-old woman killed an 82-year-old man with her car in a crash yesterday afternoon, in broad daylight, on Highway 18 southeast of Hot Springs. As a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, I have to ask/plead: South Dakota drivers! Can you please keep your eyes on the road?!
The state hasn’t announced names or charges yet… but it occurs to me to wonder: with no investigation results or charges announced two and a half weeks after Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg killed a man with his car, how much pressure must Fall River County state’s attorney Brian Ahrendt and other prosecutors around the state feel to avoid laying any heavy charges against vehicular manslaughterers right now in order to avoid creating any immediate precedents that might suggest Jason Ravnsborg needs to land in court or in jail? Could the 72-year-old killer in Fall River County face less chance of criminal charges because our law enforcement officials will want to protect their chief prosecutor from punishment? Am I thus at more risk right now on the highway on my bicycle because motorists face less risk of being held legally accountable for their inattention?
Friends, neighbors, let’s not test that thesis. Just keep your eyes on the road.
We drove by this accident minutes after it happened, as police were securing the area and adjusting traffic. We saw the car and the hole in the passenger windshield. We saw the man’s black shoe in the middle of the road. We saw the poor man covered in a blue blanket in the middle of the highway (no where near the edge, but in the middle). This particular area is not a “low speed” road, but a highway. She swerved to miss him, but couldn’t. None of us know the conditions of how/when/why he was there, but please don’t rush to judgement when you didn’t see it.
Totally not fair! Do not try to compare some “Name” to a “no name” There are no similarities between these two accidents. How dare you.
Rush to judgment? The driver killed a man. That’s evident fact, not judgment.
Dare to ask if the killing of a man by a high-profile citizen might figure in the thoughts of law enforcement in determining charges in another highway death? Not a hard dare there.
You are clearly obsessed. There is seriously many things wrong with you.
Witness, as you didn’t actually see the accident, but saw the man in the road, how do you know the location of where he was hit? You say she swerved to miss him, why would she swerve to the middle of the road instead of the shoulder, assuming he was not in the shoulder. Seems like he may have been closer to the shoulder than the middle of the road. You did note something though, the man’s shoe. I wonder in the Attorney Generals situation if the man’s shoes were still on his feet from that crash,
Cory, COVID Kristi’s and Ravnsborg’s apologists may swarm here to slap you around. But if they would actually read what you wrote, they would know there is no rush to judgment in your statement. The most daring thing you said was “As a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, I have to ask/plead: South Dakota drivers! Can you please keep your eyes on the road?!”
Hardly a reason for ruffled feathers and clutched pearls.
96 Tears, what makes you think Steve can read, let alone comprehend? He gets short talking points from Fake Noize and repeats them here.
His M.O. is to drop one and then run for the hills until he feels safe enough to drop another one liner.
Cory, you need to rethink this accident. Your post makes the assumption that the vehicle driver was at fault.
I was a first responder for 40+ years and have been on many accidents of all types. We know that a vehicle driver struck and killed a person. We do not know all the circumstances that led to the accident. Did the pedestrian step out in front of the vehicle? Was the driver’s vision reduced by the position of the sun? There are a number of things that could could have influenced the accident. Let’s wait until the investigation before making general comments that seem to infer the driver was 100% at fault.
C’mon guys. If driving conditions are bad, drivers are supposed to adjust their speed accordingly so they are better prepared to swerve, brake or whatever else needs to be done to avoid pedestrians and other objects in the roadway.
A driver has to consider their age and slowing reflexes as well. Nothing i just wrote blamed the driver or anyone else. These are facts of driving and with driving comes great responsibilities.
Cory asks:
That’s probably not why. :-)
Steve writes to Cory:
That’s true of all of us, but I give Cory a lot of credit for letting us criticize him, sometimes harshly, in his own widely read public forum. He’s also pretty good at conjugating verbs.
Here is a link to KEVN News.
https://www.blackhillsfox.com/2020/09/29/man-dead-after-vehicle-strikes-them-in-fall-river-county/
! mile west of Maverick Junction puts you into the canyon. I believe the speed limit is 50 or 55 MPH in that area.
MAVERICK JUNCTION, S.D. (KOTA) – An 82-year-old man died after a driver hit them Monday afternoon one mile west of Maverick Junction.
Okay, so who is them? More questions need to be answered. If she hit him with passenger side door, she might have missed completely had she swerved to the right, seems to me.
Mr. Mike, you are from Iowa where you have many “journalists” like this, but I suspect Mr. H the grammarian would say that media person should have written “An 82-year-old man died after a driver hit _him_ Monday afternoon one mile west of Maverick Junction.”
All car accidents and traffic deaths are sad. My good friend Bob lives down in that neck of the woods and probably knows both the people involved. A sad, sad thing.
So I have to say there are responsibilities on ALL drivers or cyclists, pedestrians etc when it comes to our roadways. I have seen cyclists with my own eyes while driving thru spearfish canyon come from my left, across the lane to make a turn with no warning or signal, luckily I saw the yellow and backed down from 45 mph (speed limited) and went 20 as with earplugs in both cyclists ears I knew they probably couldn’t hear me. U can see the chords coming up from their pockets. This alone should not be allowed, no cell phones, no ear buds. Everyone needs to be paying attention!!
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/09/29/driver-charged-with-killing-man-along-i-35w-who-was-pulled-over-giving-another-driver-directions/
Just by way of comparison.
So the question is, after an examination of the evidence, is it possible that the local states attorney’s charging decision will be influenced by Ravsbutt’s pending case?
Seems like a pretty clear and reasonable question to me. I see no judgment about the driver’s innocence or guilt. Any doubts are about SD law enforcement.
Alas, Nick Lowery reports that South Dakota’s laws are unique among our neighboring states in rigging traffic laws in favor of motorists and placing most of the burden on pedestrians to be careful. In other states, the court considers how much responsibility the driver and the pedestrian each bear for the crash, then gives damages to the pedestrian in proportion to the driver’s responsibility. In South Dakota, if the pedestrian’s actions “contribute more than slightly” to the crash, the driver probably gets off paying no damages.
Basically, as long as Ravsnborg keeps his story straight and his mouth shut, he’ll probably get off scot free.
In South Dakota pedestrians can be run down with little or no concern.The 1970s B grade movie “Death Race 2000” is real life in 2020 South Dakota. In this state owners of livestock roaming the roadways have more protections than families of dead pedestrians.
Ms Debbo, racism comes to mind on why the disparity between our two states regarding pedestrian and vehicle crashes. Think of who are mostly the pedestrians in South Dakota.
Nick, an extremely good personal injury lawyer will likely be able to get a reasonable financial settlement from insurance coverage, which will at least provide some level of consideration for the tragedy your family is enduring. This quality of a professional will undoubtedly provide a high degree of comfort to your many concerns and grief, along with essential expertise. Hopeful this connection has already occurred. Great comfort can come to this anguish this way, at least. Insurance companies are ruthless.
I concur with leslie’s opinion about the likelihood of obtaining a reasonable financial settlement from an insurance company. This may require filing a lawsuit, which after some discovery process will likely be mediated to a damage award acceptable to plaintiffs.
Mediated a to a settlement orchestrated by industry picked mediators to favor the in surance industry, inho.
mfi, you might be conflating mediation with arbitration. In mediation, the parties will agree to the mediator and no settlement can be pushed on either side. The mediator makes no decision, but is simply a neutral go between for the parties.
Arbitration agreements are often required by the insurance contract with the arbitrator already named by the insurance company in the contract long before a claim is made. And an arbitrator’s decision is a typically binding on the injured party.
If insurance wants to force a settlement they don’t use mediation, rather, they simply refuse to budge off whatever number they want to force the injured party to accept, or fall back on an arbitration clause.
In this case the victim would likely sue the driver, who is the only one with a contract with his insurance company, so it cannot force the victim into arbitration. In my experience although insurance companies might want to make a victim believe they will go to trial if the victim doesn’t accept the company’s offer, in most cases a jury trial is the last thing an insurance company wants since a jury might find that damages exceed the policy limits, which in turn can lead to claim that the company’s failure to offer to settle within those policy limits constituted “bad faith,” thereby increasing the company’s exposure. Examples of such liability include:
http://www.abourezklaw.com/bfl-01.html
You are right, of course, bcb. Arbitrate is the one i was thinking of where the decision is pretty much already made in the Insurance Co. favor.
Wish had paid more attention in school back when.