An excessive speeder killed my wife. North Carolina can do better | Opinion
On Dec. 23, 2021, my beautiful wife Lee was killed in a crash on Highway 74 on her way home from last minute shopping for Christmas day; the driver responsible was traveling at 85 miles per hour in a 55 mile per hour zone, police discovered.
Lee and I had been together for 12 years, 11 of those as husband and wife. We met in Florida, were married within a year, and had moved to the Charlotte area just six months earlier. She was, without question, the most intelligent, generous and selfless person I had ever known. A knock at the door two days before Christmas brought this to an end with the news that everyone dreads.
The driver was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, misdemeanor death by vehicle, and reckless driving, though these charges were later pled down to misdemeanor death by vehicle – a crime which led to just a 24-month suspension of his driver’s license. I am not going to tell you the outcome was satisfying. What I will tell you is that whatever the courts decided, it did not bring Lee back, nor did it change the fact that a driver traveling 30 miles per hour over the speed limit on a Charlotte-area highway is a danger that current laws do little, if anything, to prevent.
I spent months after Lee’s death trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. What I kept coming back to was this: what happened to her was avoidable. Not in the sense that every crash can be prevented, but in the very specific sense that we have the technology to stop the most dangerous speeders from driving that fast in the first place; we are just not using it.
North Carolina’s General Assembly reconvenes this month, and legislators are developing a bill that would establish an Intelligent Speed Assistance program for drivers convicted of extreme speeding offenses such as the one that ended Lee’s life. Intelligent Speed Assistance, or ISA, uses location-based technology to physically prevent a vehicle from exceeding the posted speed limit. If your car is equipped with an ISA device, it will work to prevent you from going 85 mph in a 55-mph zone. Speed-limiting technology has been used in commercial fleets for decades; this bill would apply it to the small, court-identified group of drivers who have already proven, through their repeat convictions, that fines and warnings are not enough to change their behavior.
The bill covers a defined set of serious offenses – not drivers who crept a few miles over the limit, but those convicted of reckless driving, street racing, aggressive driving, speeding to elude arrest, street takeovers, and driving at speeds that caused death or serious injury. In each case, the requirement only kicks in if the conviction results in a limitation of driving privileges.
This is not a mandate on ordinary drivers. It does not affect anyone who has not first been convicted of an extreme speeding offense in a court of law. It does not take anyone’s license. It gives convicted “super speeders” a clear choice: install the device and keep driving or lose the privilege of driving at all. That is accountability matched with proportionality. It is also, according to a new national poll from Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, what 72 percent of Americans already want, rising to 89 percent among those with a stated position.
In 2024, 378 North Carolinians were killed in speed-related crashes and nearly 8,000 more were injured. Of those fatal crashes, 62 percent involved drivers exceeding the posted speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour. Highway 74 between Matthews and Indian Trail, where Lee was killed, is exactly the kind of corridor these numbers reflect – a well-traveled road where the consequences of someone choosing to drive 30 miles over the limit fall on everyone around them.
I have spent the years since Lee’s death working as a road safety advocate because I believe something positive has to come from her tragic death. I feel strongly that no family should have to go through what I went through, and I believe that when we have a tool that could prevent an 85 mile per hour impact from ever happening, we have an obligation to use it.
North Carolina’s legislature has that tool within reach. I am asking them to seize the opportunity to utilize it.
David Counter is a Cabarrus County resident and member of Families for Safe Streets. His wife, Lee Strode Counter, was killed by a speeding driver on Highway 74 while traveling from Matthews to Indian trail in 2021.