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Does Driver’s Education Work?

Fifteen-year-old Laura Yost died on September 23 from injuries she sustained after the teenage driver of the car she was riding in turned left in front of an oncoming dump truck. A few days later, fifteen-year-old Braden Rock died after his 17-year-old sister turned left in front of an oncoming car. The next morning, 11–year-old Michael Burgess was walking across the street to board his school bus when he was struck by a car driven by a 16-year-old and seriously injured. Many have questioned in the wake of these events how such injuries might be prevented in the future.

Some have raised concerns about the legislature’s decision last session to eliminate state funding for local driver’s education programs beginning with the 2015-16 fiscal year. Yet all of the teenager drivers involved in these accidents successfully completed driver’s education, and it obviously did not inoculate them from negligent driving. Perhaps more such accidents would occur if there were no formalized driver’s education training.  Unfortunately, despite the millions spent on driver’s education programs in North Carolina every year for decades, the simple truth is that we have no idea whether driver’s education has any effect on teen driving safety.

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A Young Man with a Long History of Driving While Impaired

Rabah Samara, the young man who took the wheel of the Cadillac after it crashed into and killed sports reporter Stephen Gates as he was changing a tire on I-40 in 2003 and drove away from the scene, was back in Wake County criminal court yesterday. Samara, now 37, plead guilty to misdemeanor impaired driving—resolving his fourth charge for that offense—and was sentenced to three years of probation and 14 days of imprisonment, which he may serve on weekends. The News and Observer reported that Stephen Gates’ mother, Pat Gates, watched Samara’s hearing from the front row of the courtroom.

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When Tragic Accidents Also Are Crimes

The fields of the Capital Area Soccer League were a sea of blue again last night.  Players of all ages shelved their regulation orange jerseys and wore blue—Laura Yost’s favorite color—instead. They wore blue last week too.  Last week’s blue was to support fellow soccer player Laura, who was hospitalized after she was critically injured … Read more

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You Get What You Get and You Don’t Throw a Fit

My daughter is awfully fond of this expression (when applied to one of her brothers, of course). Turns out it also is apropos for this week’s court of appeals decision in State v. Shaw. Facts. The defendant in Shaw pled guilty to misdemeanor DWI in superior court. The trial court found one grossly aggravating factor, … Read more

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The Old Portable Breath Test Ain’t What She Used to Be

Portable breath tests don’t go very far anymore in proving whether a suspect is impaired from alcohol.  That’s because the legislature amended G.S. 20-16.3(d) in 2006 to provide that the alcohol concentration results from such a test, termed an alcohol screening test by statute, are not admissible in court— not even for purposes of determining … Read more

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Sentencing the Worst Kind of DWI

Most impaired drivers arrive at their destinations without harming themselves or anyone else.  And few such drivers are actually stopped by police.  That may explain why eight percent of people nationwide who were over 16 years old reported riding in a vehicle with a driver they thought may have consumed too much alcohol to drive … Read more

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State v. Borders: Clever Police Work or Disturbing Trickery?

Detectives investigating the rape and murder of an elderly woman in Shelby didn’t give up when suspect Donald Borders first refused to provide a sample of his DNA.  They asked again.  And again.  And again.  When Borders refused to relent after four visits to his home, investigators tried a different tack. They searched the county’s … Read more

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Share the Road. But How?

Most avid bicyclists have more than one tale of a close encounter with a motorist who does not care to—or does not know how to—safely share the road with a bicycle. The News and Observer reported here that a group of Orange County cyclists accused a pick-up truck driver of intentionally slamming on brakes in … Read more

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Court of Appeals in State v. Townsend Beefs Up Prejudice Required for Relief under Knoll

[Author’s note:  State v. Townsend was withdrawn and replaced by a subsequent opinion, available here.  The portion of the opinion discussed below was unchanged by the subsequent opinion.] No one gets relief any more under State v. Knoll—at least not from the court of appeals.  State v. Townsend, decided today, is the latest in a series … Read more

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Convicted of DWI?  Go Directly to Jail.

The General Assembly just made it a whole lot easier to determine whether a defendant imprisoned for a misdemeanor DWI conviction will serve his or her sentence in jail or prison.  Defendants sentenced to imprisonment for misdemeanor impaired driving on or after January 1, 2015 will spend that time in a local confinement facility—a jail—rather … Read more