#FatalCrash

For Bill Brown, it’s been a nightmare that will not end. Last year, his 77-year-old brother, Bud, a former serviceman, was pulling out of a private driveway onto Sullivant Avenue on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio. Sullivant, a four-lane road that runs arrow-straight through some of the city’s most economically depressed areas and features everything from pre-WWII homes to tire shops along its length, has a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.

Brian Fritz was heading down Sullivant Avenue in his Ford Explorer at 106 mph when Bud’s old Astro conversion van crossed the street ahead of him. When Fritz saw Brown crossing the street, he tapped his brakes before swerving into the middle lane to catch the back of Brown’s Astro at 95 mph. Brown was thrown from the van and killed. Fritz was treated for minor injuries and released.

This week, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien announced that no charges will be filed against Mr. Fritz. We know why that is, right?

Slate has a story about hit-and-run crashes in China that proves that truth is usually stranger than fiction.

Geoffrey Sant, who teaches law at Fordham and is on the board of the New York Chinese Cultural Center, details a trend among Chinese drivers to kill the people they hit with their cars to keep from paying millions in medical costs over their lifetimes. Often, the drivers plead ignorance — that they thought it was a bag of trash, or a box — and rarely serve significant jail sentences.

Incidents captured on video show drivers sometimes backing over their victims several times to insure that they’ve been killed, according to the report.