The Right of Way and the Wrong Way

Las Vegas is a city that prides itself on bright lights, quick money, and the firm belief that consequences are something that happens to other people. It was therefore no surprise that, on a Tuesday night around 9:35 p.m., the laws of traffic and human decency were both tested at the intersection of Lake Mead Boulevard and Torrey Pines Drive, and both came up short.

A 30-year-old woman, operating under the old-fashioned assumption that a marked crosswalk and a walk signal meant something, attempted to cross the street. It was her first mistake, though it ought not to have been, as there was a time when such signals were treated less like suggestions and more like commandments, but times have improved, and obedience has fallen out of fashion.

Enter a 2021 GMC Sierra, a vehicle of impressive size and confidence, traveling southbound with the apparent conviction that the right of way belongs to whoever takes it. The truck failed to yield, struck the woman, and ran over her with its left tires, an action both decisive and entirely unnecessary.

The driver, a 27-year-old man named Lamberto Nunez, then made a second, more telling decision. Rather than stop, render aid, or even pretend to be the sort of citizen we put in pamphlets, he left the scene without so much as an introduction. It is a curious instinct, this belief that one can outrun both the law and the facts, though it remains popular among those who have not yet tried it.

The woman headed to UMC with life-threatening injuries, and Mr. Nunez was later located, along with the truck, which had not shared his enthusiasm for disappearing, and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on suspicion of hit-and-run.

Police report that impairment was not a factor, which is almost disappointing. It is easier to forgive a man who is drunk than one who is sober and still makes the same choices. Sobriety removes the last respectable excuse and leaves a man alone with his judgment, which in this case appears to have been traveling even faster than the truck.

There is much said nowadays about infrastructure, visibility, and the technicalities of modern life. Yet here we have a crosswalk, a signal, and a human being doing precisely what the system asked of her. Opposite her, we have a machine, a driver, and a decision to ignore both law and conscience.