Another extreme drunk driving death reinforces my eagerness for greater toughness and technology
In part because a new new drunk driving story involves roads I drive on every week, I find myself yet again annoyed and frustrated that our criminal justice system does not treat more seriously and systematically a crime that kills and hurts so many innocent people every year. This local story, headlined “Columbus Man Involved In Fatal Delaware Crash Faces OVI Charge,” provides the basic details:
A Columbus man has been arrested and charged with operating a vehicle while impaired after he was involved in a fatal crash in Delaware County Thursday night [at 8:45pm]. Troopers from the Delaware post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol say Marc Kraft’s blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit at the time of the crash Thursday night….
Kraft has had five prior DUI convictions in Pennsylvania dating back to 1989 and he has been without an operator’s license since 1992.
This other local story has more details on the crime and the carnage:
Witnesses reported seeing Kraft drive between 80 and 100 miles per hour….
[Heidi] Hecker, 36, died at the scene of the crash. A 10-month-old infant inside the Subaru was transported to Nationwide Children’s Hospital and was listed in critical condition on Friday morning. Brad Weaver, who was also in the Subaru, was transported for medical attention and listed as in critical condition.
To review: A loser with five prior DUI convictions and without a valid license for decades, while very drunk (with a BAC of at least .25), drives thirty MPH over the speed limit and slaughters an innocent woman and critically injures another man and an infant. I continue to be troubled that we fail to apply some form of three-strikes (or four-strikes or five-strikes) and-you-are-out to serious drunk driving offenses like we do with many other plainly less dangerous crimes so that the tragic loss of innocent life in this case (and I suspect many others) might have been saved. In addition, I continue to wish our society and car companies would worry less about helping us have new technologies to check twitter feeds in our cars and would instead develop new technologies to prevent anyone with a BAC above .10 from being able to get a car started.
Some related posts on my concerns about undue sentencing leniency for drunk drivers:
- Getting tougher on drunk driving
- Why do we worry so much more about sex offenders than drunk drivers?
- Technology versus toughness to combat drunk driving
- Undue leniency for drunk drivers?
- More discussion of leniency for drunk drivers
- More examples of undue leniency shown to repeat drunk drivers
- “Some Coloradans drive until they kill”
- Effective commentary complaining about undue leniency for drunk drivers
- Another sad example of a needless death because of weak sentences for drunk driving
- Is it time for Texas to consider making drunk driving a potential capital offense?
- Victim calls sentence for deadly DWI offense an “insult to humanity”