Several weeks ago I blogged and questioned whether all of the continually increasing harshness of the Kansas DUI law was having any effect, whatsoever, on drinking and driving and the safety of the roads. There was a major overhaul of the Kansas DUI laws in 2001. Penalties increased, the 5 year “lookback” was jettisoned in favor of a lieftime lookback, and ignition interlock devices became mandatory. Hardly a legislative session has gone by since then without the DUI penalties being further increased and the DUI laws becoming a lot stricter. Most recently, in July 2007, the law changed to increase the penalties for those who blew over a .150, and to require the impoundment or immobilization of people’s vehicles. In fact, a person accused of a DUI for the first time, who has no record of wrongdoing whatsoever, but who blows a .150 is supposed to lose his or her license to drive for one year. There are no hardship licenses, and no work privileges. This, of course, will destroy most careers, cause extreme hardship (financial, emotional, marital) and have a lot of unintended consequences (divorce, lack of child support, driving while suspended, driving without insurance). All of this for a person’s very first offense.
Given the exponentially increasing harshness of the law I pondered whether Kansas society was at least getting the benefit of fewer DUI arrests and safer roadways. No surprise to me, NHTSA just released statistics which show that Kansas had one of the highest INCREASES in drunk driving fatalities both by numbers and by percentages. So, the problem is apparently getting worse? At least these numbers show it is not getting any better.
The drunk driving problem cannot be solved by harsher punishment. It is a social problem and chemical dependency problem. All of the jailings and all of the license suspending are apparently not making much of a difference. The Kansas DUI law needs another overhauling, but not to make the law stricter and harsher on people. We need sentencing laws that will actually work and make a difference in our society. As I have said before, until attitudes change in the community, and there are effective treatment and education programs, and until there is infrastructure like public transportation available, all of the harshest laws possible will not solve this issue. The number of DUI arrests and deaths continues to stay the same or go up. One definition of insanity is continuing to repeat the same behavior over and over expecting a different result. The DUI laws in Kansas are apparently less than sane. We need to rethink the approach.