Straight Roads and Crooked Judgment

There are few things in this country as honest as a long Nevada highway. It does not flatter you, it does not guide you with committee meetings, and it does not apologize when you misuse it. It simply lies there, straight as a sermon and twice as unforgiving.

On the morning of April 24, out near White Pine County, where the land is wide and the traffic is thin, a burgundy Ford Expedition was headed north on State Route 487. It was about half a mile above Baker, and not far from Utah, where even the tumbleweeds mind their manners.

At approximately 9:50 a.m., the Nevada Highway Patrol received word that something had gone wrong. It turns out the vehicle had drifted off the right side of the road. Now, a road like that gives a person ample opportunity to correct their sins gently and return to civilization.

But modern driving, like modern politics, favors dramatic overcorrection.

The driver steered left too much. Then right too much again.

It is a popular method these days: make one mistake and correct it with two larger ones. The vehicle crossed the center line, then left the roadway again, and finally overturned, as if concluding the argument with a period.

Inside the vehicle was 18-year-old Katherine Truong of San Jose, California. She was not wearing a seatbelt.

When the dust settled, she did not rise with it. And there the highway, which had been silent all along, rendered its verdict.

Now, there will be discussions, as there always are. Committees may convene in places far from that stretch of asphalt.

Someone may suggest more signs, or softer shoulders, or a study funded at great expense to confirm what a $10 driver’s manual already states plainly: stay in your lane, mind your speed, and wear your seatbelt. But old rules persist without amendment.

Roads do not negotiate, and physics does not care about your intentions. And personal responsibility, though deeply unfashionable in certain circles, remains the only law that arrives first at the scene.

Out there near mile marker 7, the land kept its quiet, the road kept its line, and the consequences kept their appointment.