#HitAndRun

Roadway fatalities have been on the decline relative to population since the 1970s. However, the safest year on record since car ownership became commonplace was actually 2014. Deaths spiked in the following two years, with a very modest decline in 2017. While some of the increase can be attributed to more people driving more miles than ever before, accounting for both elements still results in a higher overall rate of fatal incidents.

Hit-and-run statistics mimic this trend, with 2,046 pedestrian deaths reported in 2016. It’s not the total number that’s alarming — it’s the rate of increase, too. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety now claims hit-and-run fatalities are becoming a serious issue; reported incidents within the United States have seen a 60-percent increase since 2009. In fact, they’re the highest they’ve been since the NHTSA started keeping track in 1975.

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.

Oh, Cayenne owners, you so crazy! And I should know — the $96,000 GTS 6MT above was briefly my company car way back in the day. I also had a plain “S” in 2004, although that proved to be so popular with a business partner of mine I wound up trading him for a Cadillac STS. Neither of the Touaregs-in-drag ever managed to spend more than a few months away from the loving embrace of our local Porsche dealer, so there was no third Cayenne in the plan. You know what they say: fool me twice, I won’t get fooled again.

But there are people out there who have found the Cayenne even more painful than I did.

How often have you heard someone go on and on about how real road racers and autocrossers don’t screw around and endanger other people on the street? The answer to that probably depends on how much time you spend hanging around road racers and autocrossers. Radomin Delgado might be an exception: he was cited doing 105mph in a 70 some time ago, and is a “person of interest” in a crash that totaled his 2009 Ferrari F430 Scuderia, killed one man, and severely injured the man’s life-long partner. Yet he was an SCCA champion and NASA instructor.

Mr. Delgado’s actions aren’t sitting very well with police or the public, but you could learn a little from what he’s done, so let’s discuss.