Live from the Nuke Free Zone

Sonoma County was recently struck by one of those tragedies that happens all too often: a bicycler was killed by a drunk driver. It’s quite natural after such a tragedy is to wonder how this sort of thing can be prevented. Reading the Press Democrat today, I can’t shake the feeling that the Pee Dee’s top story is trying to promote a solution that would be too authoritarian. “DUI suspect arrested 7 times before” reads the headline, the article noting how “despite that history… [he] had a valid license”.

Then I look into the numbers. For one, in a quibble worth quibbling about, he’s only been convicted four of the seven times. Are we to treat arrests the same as convictions now? More importantly, most of his arrests were back in the 1970s and early ’80s. He’s only had one arrest (and conviction) in the past ten years, so exactly what standards would the Pee Dee impose on drunk driving offenders for this man to not have had his license on the tragic day? No guaranteeing the accuracy of the source, but this website says the maximum term of license suspension for the first drunk driving conviction in a 7 year period is 6 months. If all of his convictions had been about the time of his last conviction in mid-2001, with the maximum penalty of a 4 year revocation, he would have been off the road, but only for the next two months and a week plus whatever time it took to earn a license again.

I know it’s not fashionable to take the side of a drunk driver who just killed someone, but criminal punishments must allow the opportunity for penitence,
for the criminal to reject his past, restore his rights, and become a productive member of society. Although the number of criminals who do this is low — about a third, according to a recent report — if society does not leave the option open, the number can be expected to approach zero. To those who seem to want to divide society into two groups of permanent criminals and honest men with nothing between them, who seem to want to throw them all in jail forever and throw away the key, I say let he who has never jaywalked, never trespassed, never drank to excess, never raised a hand in anger, be the one to throw the first stone.

I understand, also, this dispassionate analysis will win me no friends in the victim’s family. If the victim had been close to me, the police would probably have to keep me off the driver, so I’m being a bit hypocritical, but it is only by holding rational principles and applying them disinterestedly that we can be a nation of laws, not a nation of whims. You cannot prevent all tragedies such as this one without severely limiting freedoms. To use an extreme example from recent history, the streets were safe in the Soviet Union, but I would not want to live there. The best we can do is to compose laws which strike a balance to prevent as many tragedies as we can while limiting as few freedoms as possible.