Pedestrians Keep Dying on Georgia Roads

The sad state of pedestrian infrastructure in the United States doesn’t usually make the headlines. An exception came last year, when an Atlanta-area woman named Raquel Nelson was convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of her four-year-old son, A.J., because she had been crossing the street illegally with him when he was hit and killed by a car. She could have been sentenced to three years in prison.

The man behind the wheel was Jerry Guy, who pleaded guilty to hit-and-run in the case. He admitted to drinking earlier in the day and said he had been prescribed pain medication as well. He’s blind in one eye. In 1997, Guy had been convicted of two other hit-and-runs that occurred on the same day, one of them on the very same road where A.J. died. But prosecutors still decided to go after Nelson a month after her son died, and she could have ended up doing more time than the driver. Hers is not the only such case.