‘There needs to be laws’: Mom fights for consequences after son dies in crash

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The mother of a motorcyclist killed in a failure to yield collision is working on a campaign to raise awareness and make harsher penalties for the crashes.

Robert Fiaccato was killed last April when he was hit while driving his motorcycle.

The driver was cited for failure to yield right-of-way on a left turn and fined $232. For Fiaccato’s mom Cheryl Magoc, the penalty was not nearly enough.

“The people I talk to they’re like why didn’t they get manslaughter?” Magoc said. “Why aren’t they in jail? Why didn’t they lose their license? Because there’s no law, there’s no law.”

Since then, she’s been working on a campaign called “Gone Too Soon,” working with motorcycle rights organization ABATE to make videos with testimonies from parents who’ve lost loved ones to spread awareness about these collisions. She hopes the videos will start being played in schools, educating young people about the importance of paying attention on the roads. In the new year, they’ll be taking their campaign to the statehouse, in hopes of getting a new failure to yield law passed with more penalties.

“We are just losing too many friends and family, and they need stricter consequences for these people and maybe they’ll start looking out more, they’ll start being more attentive,” Dina Watson, who was involved in a failure to yield collision, said.

Watson said she and her husband were ejected from their motorcycle in 2019 after being hit.

“Ended my life,” Watson said. “I mean I can’t work anymore. I’m on disability. I’m young, too young for disability. I loved working and it just changed my life, changed forever.”

The Gone Too Soon campaign will be taking to the statehouse Jan. 10.

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