Congresswoman’s Driver in Fatal Crash Had History of Troubling Aggro Tweets

A 27-year-old staffer with a history of troubling tweets about fast driving was behind the wheel during the crash that killed Rep. Jackie Walorski, according to a revised police statement — and the revelation is raising complicated questions about how to change a transportation culture where speed is considered socially acceptable and actively encouraged by the design of our roads.

Late last week, police updated their preliminary report of the Aug. 3 collision in rural Elkhart County, Ind., in which an SUV carrying the GOP rep. and two of her staffers collided head-on with another car on a two-lane State Route 19.

Contrary to the findings of the initial investigation, officers said, it was the Congresswoman’s SUV and not the other vehicle that crossed the highway’s center line, and staffer Zachery Potts was behind the wheel. Walorski, Potts, fellow staffer Emma Thomson, 28, and the driver of the other vehicle, Edith Schmucker, 56, were all killed.

Buttigieg does have significantly more authority to require automakers to install speed governors on new cars, but he’s so far been reluctant to do it — and even if he did, it would take decades to phase ungoverned vehicles out of the fleet.

The very worst thing Buttigieg could do now, though, is to fail to acknowledge that the deaths of these four people were entirely preventable — even though they died on the kind of rural road where fast speeds and deadly car crashes are accepted as a way of life by too many, including, apparently, the driver in this particular crash.