Do even more to stop drunken driving
Suffolk Deputy Sheriff Robert Howard checks cars for impaired drivers at a Long Island Expressway checkpoint in Medford early Jan. 2. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
Since 1982, drunken-driving deaths have plummeted 61 percent on Long Island, 62 percent across New York State and 50 percent nationally.
That's great news, but a harder look at the numbers shows that progress in addressing the problem has stopped. The tallies for 2009 are almost identical to those for 2000, and it's only an increase during the middle of the last decade that makes the results look so good this year.
And with 58 drunken-driving deaths on Long Island in 2009 and 320 statewide, we can't accept this plateau.
Progress has stalled because we've pretty much persuaded the sensible people to stop driving drunk, to stop letting their friends drive drunk, and to use designated drivers, taxis and public transportation. The public-service messages and educational initiatives that made this possible need to continue, so that people won't lose sight of the dangers, and the next generation of drivers will be raised in a culture where impaired driving is simply not acceptable.
That will only preserve our progress, however, not reduce the problem further.
The challenge we're left with is vastly tougher than changing the behavior of occasional drinkers who, once in a blue moon, drove impaired. To reduce drunken driving and the deaths that accompany it even more, we have to get habitual drunken drivers off the roads. And trying to come up with a sane set of rules to change people who frequently engage in insane behavior is never easy.
Peer pressure won't alter the habits of the habitual drunken drivers because often their peers have the same problem. Taking away their licenses won't stop those willing to drive without a license. Fines and prison sentences don't seem to help much either - though prison does, at least, keep repeat offenders off the streets while they're in the cells.
So we need to keep searching for effective ways to make it harder for them to drive drunk. License revocations and insurance regulations have helped a little, and a law passed last year that requires alcohol interlock devices on the vehicles of those convicted of even one DWI helps more - but the requirement should last longer than the six-month minimum mandated. Another recently passed law making driving drunk with a child in the car a felony is also a positive step. But some habitual offenders seem willing to endure nearly any hardship their habit brings.
The question becomes how far we should go in punishing habitual drunken drivers and keeping them from the wheel? The answer, right now, is still further than we have.
This battle can never be won fully, but we have to keep fighting it. That means we can't stop educating everybody to the dangers of drunken driving, and we must keep raising the penalties and hardships imposed on habitual offenders. hN
