On the face of it, the other charge seems more ironclad. He's speculating here about what specific defenses factored into the DA's decision, but the point is that there are many challenges to a reckless driving prosecution. Once he did, he tried to regain control, which Burney says could be a defense. You could also argue that he wasn't intending to lose control of the vehicle. A Team Exploited COVID-19 to Set Cannonball Record.Had he come close to striking a pedestrian it may be a different story, but in this case the defense may have convinced the prosecutor that the evidence can't clear the extremely high bar required to prove reckless driving beyond a reasonable doubt. Without other road users, it's hard to prove that he was endangering users of the public highway. Like the groups that broke cannonball records during this period, Chen had access to open roads largely devoid of traffic. That's relevant because this took place in April of 2020, when New York was under a stay-at-home order. And that get's tricky when there's nobody else on the road." That prosecutor has to be able to show-notwithstanding what the language of what the statute says-that the driver was actually disregarding the safety of other people. "The way the courts have interpreted reckless driving in New York is tricky. "For reckless driving, at least, the prosecutor needs a lot more evidence than the police do to prove that case," Burney told Road & Track. But just because you can make an arrest doesn't mean that the charges will stick. You must be driving in a way that "unreasonably interferes with the free and proper use of the public highway," per the statute, or "unreasonably endangers users of the public highways." Interpreting that, Burney says, gives the police a lot of leeway. Burney, a former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney and former public defender, says that reckless driving in New York is both unspecific and hard to prove.
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