Actually, it's astoundingly rare in the US for a motorist who strikes and kills a cyclist or pedestrian to be charged with anything related their death. If there was a DUI, hit-and-run, suspended license or bench warrant involved then law enforcement will diligently follow up on those offenses, but as a member of the NYPD once explained to me (I'm a cycling advocate in NYC so I get into these discussions), it's surprisingly hard to charge the driver with manslaughter in most cases, or anything related to the death. For one, the legal definition rules out any situation where an otherwise-lawful driver can say "Well gee I didn't see them!" and secondly, draconian US penalties for crimes like vehicular homicide tend to make prosecutors recoil at the thought of 'ruining the life' of an otherwise law-abiding citizen by sending them to prison for 15 years, a person who's shoes they can see themselves in. So it doesn't happen unless the perp already had it coming for other huge reasons. It's a legal problem where we lack appropriate sentencing, and a cultural problem where we identify with the criminal. As you can imagine, some cycle-savvy Scandinavian countries have already done a good job of tackling these issues via appropriate sentencing (License revoked or limited for a reasonable period of time, and transportation-related community service) and infrastructure improvements (No death on the road can be put to rest without a thorough analysis of the traffic conditions that caused it and steps taken to correct the problem, such as actual road changes - Something we in the US seem to require a quota of 3 or more deaths at a location before doing).
Here,
this NYTimes article does a great job of expanding on the issue, despite it's clickbait headline.
