The 1,520 empty shoes set out Friday in Greensboro’s Center City Park represented people killed in speed-related crashes on North Carolina roads over the past four years. The display brought the statewide toll into focus for families including Ryan Moeller, whose mother, Joan Drake, was struck and killed by a driver going 98 mph in a 55-mph zone.
A Hospice Nurse Lost On An Ordinary Tuesday
The N.C. Shoe Memorial for World Day of Remembrance ran from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Center City Park, 200 North Elm Street, according to wxii12.com. Drake was killed on U.S. 70 in Clayton in June 2023, as abc11.com reported, and court documents cited in that report said the driver who hit her car was traveling 98 miles per hour in a 55-mph zone. According to the seed report from WXLV, the driver struck Drake while she was pulling into a Walmart.
Drake worked as a hospice-care nurse and volunteered in her community, per the seed report. Moeller told WXLV his mother was hit by a speeding driver on an ordinary Tuesday in the middle of the day, an event that changed his life permanently. He is part of North Carolina Families for Safe Streets, the outlet reports, and he came to the park Friday not just to grieve but to push for legal change.
A Sentence That Still Troubles The Family
The driver who struck Drake was sentenced to 18 months of probation and community service, per abc11.com's reporting, even though Drake's family separately filed a civil suit and was awarded a $5.1 million judgment. The family hopes to work with North Carolina lawmakers and advocates to get a bill drafted seeking stiffer penalties, the same report notes. Moeller told WXLV that other states with safer roads have felony speeding and super-speeding laws and do not rely on a misdemeanor death-by-vehicle charge the way North Carolina does.
Under North Carolina law, misdemeanor death by vehicle is classified as a Class A1 misdemeanor, according to the North Carolina General Statutes, and per WXLV's reporting it can carry up to 150 days in jail depending on a driver's prior convictions. Moeller said North Carolina loses about five people a day to speeding and reckless driving, and event organizers cited by WXLV said the state has averaged roughly 1,675 deaths a year in crashes of all kinds in recent years.
Sunday's Remembrance And A Statewide Push
The shoe display came two days ahead of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, scheduled for Sunday, November 15, which honors people killed or seriously injured in crashes, WXLV reports. Memorial advocates at the event called for technology that limits vehicle speeds for drivers with serious speeding violations. That echoes a separate statewide proposal: a bill reported by abc11.com would mandate Intelligent Speed Assistance for drivers whose licenses were revoked for reckless driving or extreme speeding once they regain driving privileges, using location-based data to prevent a vehicle from exceeding the posted limit.
The scale of the problem shows up in state numbers. North Carolina recorded 378 deaths and nearly 8,000 injuries in speed-related crashes in 2024, abc11.com reported, and 62% of those fatal speed-related crashes involved drivers going more than 10 mph over the limit. More recent figures show some improvement: traffic fatalities statewide dropped 12% in 2025 to 1,524, the fewest since 2019, according to newsobserver.com, while crash injuries fell nearly 6% to 107,076. Even so, speed was cited as contributing to just 5.4% of crashes but 22% of traffic deaths last year, the same report found.
Speed’s role in crashes
Speeding was a contributing factor in approximately 5.3% of all reportable motor vehicle crashes in 2024, according to NCDOT. That measure differs from the 2025 figures above, which show speed’s share of crashes and its larger share of traffic deaths.
Greensboro's Own Numbers And Its Response
During the city's Safe Streets Week, 32 traffic cones represented the 32 people who died in traffic incidents in Greensboro in 2025, per wxii12.com's reporting. Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter, who leads the city, told WXLV that her own husband was hit by a red-light runner and continues to suffer concussion effects. Greensboro Police Department collaborates with other groups on road safety, according to the seed report, and the city has conducted traffic management studies as part of its broader Safer Streets Week programming.
Greensboro is also moving on a $735,945 Safe Streets for All grant, which wxii12.com reports is meant to fund a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan addressing speeding, road-safety assessment and community input. The plan will give special attention to East Greensboro neighborhoods, where about 35% of the city's population lives, per the same outlet. City transportation staff plan to use the grant to track where drivers speed and will use that location data to decide where to test changes, WXLV reports, which could include speed-display signs, pavement markings encouraging slower driving, and road diets, better lighting or speed monitoring, as outlined by wxii12.com. Friendly Avenue already has traffic-calming measures in place, according to the seed report.
For now, Moeller's message to drivers was simple, as he put it to WXLV: leave more time for trips, and slow down.
