A Pedestrian Lying on a Busy Downtown Road in Black Clothes... The Driver Who Ran Over Them Is Ultimately 'Acquitted'

The driver in the accident said, "It was dark and I didn't know it was a person"
The court: "It was unforeseeable that someone would be lying on a downtown street... nor were there circumstances of careless driving"

The court acquitted a driver in a hit-and-run fatal accident who ran over a person collapsed on a busy downtown road and fled.

According to the legal community on the 13th, the Suwon District Court acquitted Mr. A, a man in his 20s who had been indicted on charges of violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes (hit-and-run causing death), on the 18th of last month.

Mr. A was accused of running over a victim lying on a road in Yongin in 2024 with his car's wheels, causing death, and then leaving the scene without taking measures.

Mr. A denied the charges. He argued that it was nighttime at the time of the incident and many illegally parked vehicles made it hard to secure a clear view, and that he could not at all have foreseen that a person would be lying in the middle of the road. Accordingly, when the vehicle body shook, he merely thought he had gone over a road structure such as a speed bump, and did not recognize the very fact that a traffic accident had occurred—that he had hit a person.

The court judged that Mr. A was not guilty. The court stated, "The place where the victim was lying was relatively dark, and the victim was wearing dark-toned clothing, so it would have been difficult to identify a person from inside a moving vehicle," and "Even looking at the actual dashcam footage, it appears only as a dark object on the road surface, and it seems considerably difficult to recognize it as a person."

It added, "It is difficult to impose on the driver a duty of care to foresee and prepare in advance for a person lying on the floor of a busy downtown road," and "There are also no circumstances to suggest that the defendant was speeding or carelessly operating in-vehicle devices, or otherwise failed to pay attention to driving."

Kim Min-soo, attorney of Daeryun LLC representing Mr. A, said, "For the crime of hit-and-run causing death to be established, the driver's occupational negligence and awareness of the fact that an accident occurred must be a premise," and "Based on objective circumstances such as the limited nighttime visibility and the dashcam footage, we actively proved that the driver had no duty of care to foresee the accident and had no intent regarding the hit-and-run, thereby drawing out an acquittal."

Reporter Lee Seo-hyun sunshine@kyeonggi.com

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A Pedestrian Lying on a Busy Downtown Road in Black Clothes... The Driver Who Ran Over Them Is Ultimately 'Acquitted' (Go to link)