SAFE TRAVELS NC
ISSUE 13 | OCTOBER 2025
Heroes Among Us
We’re packed this month like a Charlotte street at rush hour.
We’ve got an interview with a man who helped save someone from a wrecked car moments before it burst into flames. We’ve got details on how high schoolers can win $1,000 college scholarships.
We’ve got an interview with the head of the NC Division of Motor Vehicles, and we’ve got some good news on crash statistics. Thanks for reading!
You may have seen local and national coverage recently of a Raleigh father/son duo pulling a man from his wrecked car moments before it went up in flames.
But did you know: That wasn’t even the first time someone from this family had rescued someone from a vehicle this year!
Let’s start in New York. It’s the end of August, about midnight on a Saturday when the Pickett family – in town because Larry Pickett Jr. is a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy and a safety for the Army football team – comes across a car that looks like it struck a utility pole.
Other drivers were calling 911.
But under the vehicle, Larry Pickett Sr. and his son can see live power lines.
“You could hear the pops from the utility line sparking under the vehicle and see the white bright flashes of the utility line,” Pickett Sr. remembers. “And, as we looked, there was a man in the car.”
“There was no talking,” Pickett Sr. said. “We just went straight to him.”
Father and son jumped over a downed cable to get to the car. One of Pickett’s daughters started recording. You can watch the now viral video to see father and son struggling to free the man from his driver’s seat.
You can see white flashes and hear electric pops as they free him, then carry the man – limp, son holding his shoulders, father with his feet - across the street.
Pickett Sr. figures the car caught fire 30 seconds later.
Larry Pickett Jr. reflects on he and his father’s courageous actions.
The story made national news many times over. Good Morning America wants to have the Picketts in-studio for a reunion with the man they saved, who hasn’t been publicly identified. Pickett Jr. has been nominated for multiple awards and lauded by the leadership at West Point. It’s a good bet he’ll be featured during national Army-Navy football game coverage later this year.
But what no one seems to have noticed is that this wasn’t even the first person Larry Pickett Sr. pulled from a car this year.
In May he was driving through Raleigh when he saw a car overturned in the median.
He saw smoke. The car was “filled with dirt and grass from where the glass shattered completely when the car flipped,” he wrote on Facebook at the time.
“The woman hung suspended by her seatbelt,” Pickett Sr. wrote. “After a tense moment, as she grappled with the locked seatbelt under the strain of her weight, it finally released and I lifted her from the car and carried her across the street to safety.”
An ambulance arrived. A passing nurse and an off-duty EMT checked the woman over. Pickett Sr. left and said he never got the woman’s name.
Medical responders care for victim after the Picketts’ New York rescue.
That’s twice, in a little more than three months.
“What I make of that,” Pickett Sr. told Safe Travels NC, “is that God has made sure to put me and my son in the right place.”
This is a recurring feature profiling the first responders and Good Samaritans who risk themselves to help their fellow travelers. Got a hero you’d like to see profiled? Email us!
Crash fatalities are down this year across the United States and in North Carolina, according to the latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures.
Nationally, the NHTSA says we saw “a substantial 8.2% decline in roadway deaths” in the first half of 2025, based on early counts. Deadly wrecks went down even though the total distance Americans traveled increased by 12.1 billion miles.
Put that together and it’s “the lowest mid-year fatality rate since 2014,” the NHTSA said.
That’s still 17,140 lost lives from January to June.
Crashes fell in 38 states, and in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In North Carolina crashes were down 8.5%.
That’s 713 deaths in the first half of this year in North Carolina, compared to 779 in the first half of 2024.
That’s 66 more people who are alive.
These figures are all calculations based on data gathered from multiple sources, the NHTSA said, including a census of fatal crashes in all 50 states. They may be revised as time passes, and the full NHTSA report is available here.
This is good news - but it’s only one step forward and not the whole way there to safer roads and highways. Keep up the good driving. Keep TALKING about safe driving. Lower this number.
NCAST’s Teen Safe Driving Ambassador program went live for Year 2 last month, and this time we’re doubling the scholarship students can win: $1,000.
Already the advocacy program - a partnership with the NC High School Athletic Association - has nearly 100 high schoolers signed on! Sign ups are still live, so forward this to the young person in your life who can be a leader for good driving habits.
Car crashes are a leading cause of death for teenagers, and we lose about 100 teenagers on North Carolina roads each year. Fifty percent of the time they weren’t wearing a seatbelt.
Crashes are preventable. Focus behind the wheel. Model good driving habits. Tell others. Don’t accept distracted driving. Speak up and save a life!
Speaking of teen drivers: Age doesn’t make you a better driver, experience does.
A new study out of Virginia Tech found that teenagers who practiced longer with a parent or other instructor had a “significantly lower” number of crashes and close calls once they started driving independently.
The study followed 82 teen drivers for 22 months with cameras installed in their vehicles.
Other findings:
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Teens who shared a family car had fewer risky driving behaviors than those with their own vehicle.
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Teens trained in diverse conditions– like driving at night and on varied road types– have fewer crashes when they begin driving independently.
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Teen drivers sped more frequently on roadways with speed limits between 25 and 35 mph than on roads with 55+ mph speed limits.
Researchers said this is the first study to find statistically significant evidence that increased practice during the learner’s permit phase helps reduce crashes, but this shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone familiar with North Carolina’s Graduated Driver Licensing program, which gives young drivers more time to learn.
Crashes involving 16-year-old drivers fell quickly after the program was implemented, and fatal crashes and those with serious injuries fell 46%.
Mecklenburg County voters will decide Nov. 4 whether to add a penny sales tax to raise nearly $20 billion for transportation projects over the next 30 years.
The plan - laid out here - would have a huge impact, not just on Charlotte congestion, but safety.
The plan includes:
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Roadway and crosswalk redesigns to make streets safer for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders.
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A focus on historically underserved neighborhoods where pedestrian deaths due to road designs are more common.
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New traffic signals and new technology to keep traffic moving and make things safer.
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More and better public transit to take cars off the road and massive road improvements to get people where they’re going faster and safer.
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New sidewalks, bike lanes and multi-use paths to keep pedestrians and cyclists away from vehicles, particularly in high-need areas.
The plan would put 40% of what’s raised toward road improvements, 20% to buses and 40% to rail projects in an already congested area that’s expected to grow by more than 50% over the next two decades.
We have a new feature this month, brought to you by the North Carolina Farm Bureau. It’s called “Safer Shares”. Wherever you see the Safer Share callout, you can grab the accompanying infographic, save it, and send it out on the social media of your choice. We’d love it if you also find, follow and tag NCAST!
Consider telling your followers:
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Rural roads carry less than half of America’s traffic, but they account for more than half the nation’s vehicular deaths.
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Fatalities are FIVE TIMES more likely in crashes involving farm vehicles.
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82% of farm equipment crashes involve a non-farm vehicle. Please slow down and be patient!.
This message is proudly brought to by
“What do people mean by ‘defensive driving?’”
This month’s question comes from Sophia at Cape Fear High School.
Got a question? Ask it in a short video and send it here.
In the News
Car on dark NC road hits 300 lb bear
- The News & Observer
North Carolina DMV Commissioner Paul Tine (center) chats with Rick Pierce (left), an NCAST board member and director of agency engagement for National General Insurance, and Wayne Sumner of Jackson Sumner & Associates (right) at InsurEXPO25 last month.
Legislation signed into law last week reduces how often North Carolinians have to visit the DMV, one of many changes underway at a long-struggling agency now under new leadership.
The changes mean drivers can go as long as 24 years without renewing their license in person, though those with a REAL ID will have to visit an office at least every 16 years to update the photo.
Teenage drivers also get relief because the bill dropped one of the three in-person visits they’ve had to make to complete North Carolina’s graduated licensing program.
These are some of the changes that Commissioner Paul Tine, who joined the DMV five months ago, hopes will cut visits, and therefore wait times, at DMV offices across the state.
Tine told agents gathered late last month at an Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina conference that he and his team have identified 110 things they want to change and that they’re working through the list.
Some, like the office visit changes, require General Assembly approval.
Others are simple. Tine said the DMV bought new uniforms to boost morale and replace the “threadbare” ones some employees were wearing.
Some are more sweeping. With previous legislative approval to bring on more people and open new offices, the division hired 64 people in a month - a pace all but unheard of in state government.
Some are longer term: Expect faster scanners and other upgraded systems with better interfaces at offices in the future, Tine said.
“We didn't have a single item that drove us to where we are today,” he said. “There’s not going to be a single item that suddenly fixes it.”
One Last Thing…
Lumberton was the worst city in North Carolina for crashes last year, according to new NC Department of Transportation data.
No one else brag - especially not if you’re Greensboro, which ranked No. 1 for three years running from 2021 to 2023.
These rankings are based on 10 sub-rankings based on the number of crashes in a city, the city’s population and the severity of those crashes. They’re part of a boatload of statistics the DOT releases each year.
Lumberton had been No. 2 for years, before moving this year to No. 1.
Above is a bonus Safer Share listing the top 5 worst cities (over 10,000 population) for crashes this year, based on the DOT calculations. Feel free to share this graphic on social media.