Seer1

It's also what happens when you drink and drive... I pray you never lose anyone to a drunk driver.

Tobias-Reiper

Really? When you drink and drive people just run in front of your car on 6 lane highways with posted speed limits of 45-55 MPH? That Stallworth was legally drunk at the time had nothing to do with this Reyes guy running across a 6 lane highway without looking.

Could it be that Stallworth could've done something (brake hard/faster/earlier, steer around, etc) if his blood alcohol was under the limit? Would Reyes still be alive? Maybe. We don't know that. But, surely, had Reyes walked to where the stoplight is, and crossed the highway on the pedestrian crossing, I am 99.99% sure we would have survived that morning.

I am not absolving Stallworth for drinking and driving. That's obviously wrong. And I know all I need to know about drunk drivers. I have experienced drunk drivers in person, twice. Once my mother and I almost got killed by one in an accident that looked like one of those old Harold Loyd movies. The other time I somehow was able to steer away enough from a drunk driver who jumped into my highway lane in front of me going the wrong way; still got clipped and spun around a few times, but no flip and didn't hit anything else, other than the drunk driver's face, multiple times.

But, at the same time, I can't absolve someone from blame for doing something that was pretty much ingrained in my head not to do since I was a kid. Paraphrasing my grandmother: "when you cross the street, always cross at the corner and make sure you look both ways even if you have the right of way. If the car doesn't stop, you can get killed".

And by the way, there are laws against jaywalking. Reyes himself was breaking a law designed to protect him. As per the Florida Pedestrian Law Enforcement Guide:
Notice it doesn't say "...when an approaching drunk driver"

So, what did we learn today?
1. Drunk driving, bad.
2. Crossing a 6 lane highway with a posted speed limit of (I believe) 50 MPH without looking both ways at upcoming traffic, not on a signalized intersection, bad.

'Cause the simple man pays the thrills, the bills and the pills that kill

spkb25

Seer there was a video of the incident, which is why Donte did not face stiffer penalties under the law. From my understanding-it was clear on the video that the man just walked directly out in front of his vehicle providing him no opportunity to stop. Sober, drunk- they concluded it would not have mattered due to the posted speed limit and how the man just basically walked directly in front of his car.