Three years after being convicted of vehicular homicide for crossing the street with her young son, Raquel Nelson today finally was freed of the looming threat of three years in jail. The metro Atlanta mom made national headlines in 2011 when a Cobb County jury found her guilty of killing her four-year-old because she chose to cross a five-lane road from a bus stop to her apartment, rather than walk an additional two-thirds of a mile to cross at the nearest signal. The judge at the time offered her an option for a new trial, which she took, along with a pro bono offer from more experienced counsel.

The Atlanta region soundly rejected a penny sales tax to fund $7.1 billion in new transportation improvements for the traffic-snarled region. Coming on the heels of the passage of MAP-21, a federal bill indicating a shrinking federal role in transportation funding, many wondered: Will metro regions and localities be able to bootstrap their way out of congestion and mobility woes? Was the failure of Atlanta’s transportation vote a bellwether for votes in other states and metros?

It took three tries in the Georgia legislature for metro Atlanta to win the right to vote itself a regional sales tax to fix its transportation woes, and another two years of a grinding political process to come up with a list of 157 highway and transit projects  that just might do the trick. Now [...]

You may not have known it — it’s not the most publicized special day on the books — but today is National Walking Day. Some of you may have traded part or all of your drive or transit trip today for a walk to work. But for many, every day is “walking day,” and it [...]

In a story far too similar to Raquel Nelson‘s ordeal, a boy was struck and killed while crossing a 5-lane arterial highway in metro Atlanta with his stepfather on New Year’s Day. Just like the incident that claimed the life of A.J Nelson, the child was halfway across a busy street with a parent and [...]

UPDATE below. More than 5,200 of you signed our petition to push for freedom for the Atlanta mother who was charged in her son’s death when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street in front of their apartment complex. Raquel Nelson is due back in court next week, but we wanted [...]

The story of Raquel Nelson, the Atlanta mother charged with vehicular homicide when her son was killed while crossing a street with her, continues to make waves in the local and national media. It’s been a galvanizing story, as people across the country were shocked to see a grieving mother convicted and facing jail time [...]

This morning Raquel Nelson got to tell a little of her own story on national television, thanks to a Today show piece, embedded below. The Georgia mom faces sentencing tomorrow of up to 36 months in jail on charges of vehicular homicide in the death of her son, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver [...]

Updated 7/25: This petition at Change.org for Raquel Nelson has a lot of momentum. Sign it if you haven’t already. It will be delivered to the judge in the case before sentencing tomorrow. The response to our post on the Atlanta mother who was charged with vehicular homicide when her child was struck by a hit-and-run [...]

Updated 7/19: The charge has been corrected. Nelson was charged with vehicular homicide. Updated 7/21: More information added at bottom. This is an advocacy blog, but typically we’re rather measured in our tone. Sometimes, however, we see something so utterly outrageous, so emblematic of the failure of our current transportation system, that “measured” just won’t cut [...]