CHARLESTON, W.Va. — When a constituent of Berkeley County Del. Larry Kump lost his wife to reckless driving, there was no mechanism to charge the driver with anything beyond a misdemeanor.
“What started me legislatively with this issue was a constituent from Berkeley County, George Martincheck. His wife Dawn was killed by a reckless driver and the driver did not receive much of a sentence at all,” Kump said.
Kump has been advocating for legislation that would stiffen the penalties of those found guilty of reckless driving:
“If you kill somebody in a motor vehicle accident, it is only a misdemeanor,” Kump said. “The bill takes the crime and makes it a felony because if you kill somebody with a motor vehicle, there ought to be circumstances more dire than just a slap on the wrist.”
On Monday, HB 2871 passed out of the House of Delegates on a 97-0 vote.
“There is still a lot of leeway with the judges,” Kump said. “But essentially, a person could get several years or more in prison” for a conviction under the provisions of HB 2871.
The Berkeley County delegate said he first became aware of the disparity in sentencing when he worked as a case manager with high-security prisoners back in the 1990s “dealing with a lot of inmates with lengthy sentences for murder, and several of the inmates said to me, ‘I could have gotten off with a very light sentence if I killed the person by driving over them with a vehicle and claiming it was an accident.'”
The bill is of particular interest to the surviving family members of fallen flagger Kathy Ruth, who are advocating for stiffer penalties for reckless driving after Ruth was killed while performing flagging operations in April of last year on Rt. 340 in Rippon, Jefferson County. The woman who pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge of Failure to Obey a Traffic Control Device was fined $100 and faced no jail time.
HB 2871 now goes to the West Virginia State Senate for further consideration.
During a floor speech before the House of Delegates Monday, Delegate Kump recounted what he called the ‘tragic’ circumstances of George Martincheck and his late wife Dawn in her death from a reckless driver.
“Sadly, while this legislation would make reckless drivers more accountable for their behavior, there still is much to be done in order to deter this wanton and negligent behavior,” Kump said.
HB 2871 now goes to the West Virginia State Senate for further consideration.
The bill changes the crime of vehicular homicide from a misdemeanor to a felony crime and proposes several significant changes to West Virginia’s traffic and criminal laws, primarily focusing on updating and expanding definitions and penalties related to vehicular homicide and related offenses.
The bill introduces new categories of vehicular homicide, including vehicular homicide by recklessness, aggravated vehicular homicide, vehicular homicide in a school zone, and vehicular homicide in a construction zone.
The new offenses come with graduated penalties, ranging from misdemeanors to felonies, with potential fines up to $20,000 and prison sentences up to 10 years.
The bill also expands the definition of criminally injurious conduct to include these new vehicular homicide offenses and adds provisions recognizing embryos and fetuses as distinct victims in certain criminal cases. Consequences under the bill could include the revocation of a driver’s license or the disqualification for a commercial driver’s license, automobile insurance policy cancellation.
The changes aim to provide more comprehensive legal frameworks for addressing serious traffic offenses, with a particular focus on enhancing penalties for incidents involving reckless or deliberate disregard for safety, especially in sensitive areas like school zones and construction zones.