Speeding/racing, drinking and driving has been endemic in our young people for years. It is a fact that many young people's brains have not fully developed enough to make smart decisions when it comes to dangerous behavior. I am not passing judgement on this poor kid but I can often hear cars racing up and down the Turnpike extension and route 1-9 late at night, especially on weekends. The cops are probably not going to do much about this. The really sad thing is I see grown men and women driving like idiots on our crowded streets. Near the White Star bar lives a guy who routinely races around the streets in a dune buggy. I am pretty sure that this is illegal. The cops continue to look the other way on these matters. I don't know if it is because they somehow relate to the juvenile macho exerted by these people or what. Meatheads one and all?

Yet another death of a young driver late at night - so sad to hear. No one knows if this young man was speeding - perhaps the results of the investigation will tell. I travel along the Pulaski Skyway often past the airport and then onto Route 22 in Hillside frequently on my way to Central Jersey to check on my Mom. Countless times I am scared out of my mind by a racing cars rocketing 100mph past me! I get a quick look while my nerves twitch and it is usually a young person in some sort of huge luxury car. And often these speed demons crack up - often traffic is delayed as we pass crumpled wrecks along the way. Is it youth, alcohol, drugs, etc.? So so sad to see - and each time one passes me I think it takes off a few days of my life in nerve damage! What is a solution? I dunno.

Where did you hear that he was racing and driving at 85 mph? It doesn't say that anywhere in the news story attached here. Do you have another source of information or is this an overactive imagination?

what idiot said it was intentional? how is it intentional when the kid was street racing...doing over 85 mph and lost control of his car. this is another case of stupidity at its best.

Quote:

I sorta knew him and he was a good kid and was not that type of person. So stop your speculation dickhead. R.I.P Elvin, may god be with you.

Whatever! Enough with the speculations...bottom line: a life taken way too young ..so sad!. My prayers are with his family!

Quote:

Drugs, Drunk, Speeding or fell asleep behind the wheel.

Quote:

The tragedy isn't the crash, it's that it was intentional. That poor woman.

i saw the wreckage of this accident in person while getting ready to leave for dorney park early saturday morning....really terrible.

Prayers to this young man's family. As a parent of two young-ish drivers, this is one of my worst nightmares. The deadly car wreck.

uhhhh is his name ELVIN or EDWIN???? Morons

DEATH ON RTE. 440
Late night accident takes life of teenager

Monday, August 04, 2008
By CHARLES HACK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Elvin Lopez, 19, of Danforth Avenue in Jersey City, had dropped his girlfriend home when he was driving back to his house along Route 440 early Saturday morning.

A self-confessed car fanatic, Lopez, who graduated from Dickinson High last year and was planning to attend Hudson County Community College next month, had made the drive countless times, relatives said yesterday.

But for some still-unknown reason, Lopez's last drive heading south on Route 440, at 3:22 a.m., proved fatal.

According to police reports, Lopez lost control of his black 1995 Acura Integra just south of Kellogg Street.

The car hit the curb and became airborne before hitting a large tree with a three-foot girth, police said.

The car then spun and came to rest around 10 feet east of the tree and the engine caught fire, police said.

His father, Rodolfo Lopez, said that nobody knows what led up to Elvin Lopez losing control, speaking outside his home yesterday as friends and relatives came by to pay their respects.

Rodolfo Lopez visited the accident site yesterday and placed a candle and a flower where his son lost his life.

Police said Edwin Lopez died from the impact of the crash.

"We still can't believe what happened," said Carlos DeLeon, a cousin of Edwin Lopez, who had "RIP Elvin" painted on the rear window of his car. "He was a good kid."

Born in the Dominican Republic, Edwin Lopez loved to fix cars, family members said. He had just done a lot of work to his Acura and was planning on repainting it, they said.

Before leaving to take his girlfriend home, Elvin Lopez told his mother he might not be back and mentioned that he had fully paid his car insurance, DeLeon said yesterday.

Edwin Lopez also made a strange request to his mom, DeLeon said.

He bought some candles for his mom, a caregiver, to take to a woman she was looking after but asked her not to take all of the candles, DeLeon said.

"Maybe he was thinking that something was going to happen," DeLeon said. "Nobody knows that."

Police are continuing to investigate the incident.