LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Brian Hibbetts spent 27 years as a police officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Now, he’s a Nevada Assembly member trying to make penalties tougher for wrong way drivers.
“The very first thing we need to do is make wrong way driving a crime again,” said Hibbetts.
Right now, he says it’s a civil matter.
In 2021, the Nevada State Legislature voted to decriminalize minor traffic offenses with the goal of keeping people out of jail for minor offenses. Hibbetts says his bill could mean six months in jail for driving the wrong way and or a thousand-dollar fine. The Assembly member says he hasn’t heard of opposition at this point.
“The only thing that I can think of off the top of my head is somebody saying, hey we just decriminalized this, why are we now re-criminalizing it four years later? And my argument to that is because this never should have been decriminalized in the first place,” said Hibbetts.
Hibbetts started looking into wrong way driving after being contacted by the grandmother of three-year-old Jaya Brooks. A wrong way driver killed the little girl in December 2023 on U.S. 95. “My thought was, my God, how horrible through absolutely no fault of the three-year-old or her father who was driving, to have this happen, let alone right before Christmas,” said Hibbetts.
He added, “If I could get one message out to drivers, it’s pay attention. Slow down, pay attention, put your phone away. Your time is not worth someone’s life.”
According to the Nevada Department of Public Safety, Office of Traffic Safety, there have been 12 wrong way fatal crashes in Nevada, with 20 deaths, from January 1, 2024, through October 2024. That is the highest number of wrong way crashes and deaths since at least 2019, according to DPS.
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