No more sob stories, killer drivers must be locked up

ISAW nothing until the windscreen shattered.’ This was serial drunk driver Sean Collins describing the moment he ploughed into a 17year-old boy on a bike, propelling him 40 metres into the air and killing him instantly.

It was also the moment when Stefan Cooper’s heartbroken sister could take no more of Collins’ evidence at the teenager’s inquest this week, and fled the room.

Mercifully, she was gone before the State Pathologist detailed the injuries that Collins inflicted on her only brother: a fractured skull, a broken neck, two broken legs, broken ribs, a traumatic brain injury. She wasn’t there to hear that Stefan died rapidly and didn’t suffer.

That may be a comfort, but it’s a small one for a family who are suffering enough already, their distress compounded by the fact that their boy’s life wasn’t worth a single day’s jail time for a man who’d already been done for drunk driving in 2006.

One conviction for drunken driving, you might think, should be enough to shame anyone out of taking such a risk again. At the very least, one conviction should carry the guarantee of jail for a repeat drink-driving offence, if we really made good on the time, money and parliamentary hot air spent on decrying the crime.

Above all, though, if we really wished to deter drunken driving, then every drunk driver who takes a life should face a mandatory prison sentence: no sob stories, no excuses, no exceptions. Sean Collins already had a record as a drunken driver when he got behind the wheel of his Land Cruiser jeep, that evening in March 2016, while almost three times over the limit. That alone should have put him at risk of a stiff jail term. The fact that he killed a teenage lad should have made it an absolute certainty.

Instead, Sean Collins walked free with just a suspended sentence. The court heard that his housebound wife relied on him as her carer. But isn’t that something Sean Collins should have considered, before he drank and drove that night? Why should Collins’s personal circumstances be allowed compound the trauma for his victim’s family as they watch their son’s killer go free? He showed zero concern for their family, why should they be forced to make allowances for his? And, unless he’s the unluckiest drunk driver on the roads, it’s highly unlikely that Sean Collins fell foul of the law on the only two occasions when he ever drank and drove: I reckon there’s a good chance this is a habit, not an aberration. That makes him a menace, and a demonstrable threat to other road users. Because, let’s face it, so far, the law has given Sean Collins very little reason to change his ways.

In June, a doctor who dodged paying €100,000 in tax was jailed for 16 months. Dr Bassam Naser’s wife, the mother of his seven children, wept in court and pleaded for mercy, but the judge was having none of it. Regardless of the family circumstances, he said, Naser ‘knew what he was doing and still he persisted’. Well, Sean Collins knew what he was doing, and still he persisted. Collins had been caught drunk driving before, but wasn’t shamed, punished or remorseful enough to mend his ways. Naser deprived the State of money, which he has since repaid. Collins deprived a family of their son and brother, he stole a young lad’s life and future. And, far from mitigating their loss, Collins’s primary concern appears to have been for his own hide, for his own freedom, for his own family.

BY coincidence, another drunk driving killer, Adrian Nestor, was back in court this week too. He was five times over the limit when he struck a Garda car, killing a pensioner and leaving a garda with life-changing spinal injuries, also in 2016. His punishment, for a life lost and another ruined after an evening spent driving from pub to pub, was a fine and 240 hours’ community service.

The Court of Appeal jailed him for two years this week, but that was arguably still too little and far too late. Once again, his personal circumstances were a factor in the sentence.

We are constantly being told that drunken driving costs lives, and we’ve just endured hours of grandstanding Dáil debate on a minor tweak to our drink-driving laws. But aside from the ad campaigns, the talk, the pledges and the statistics, where are the practical deterrents to drink driving?

Where is the law that says drunken driving causing death is culpable homicide and must be punished with jail time?

And why do the families of the perpetrators often seem to merit more sympathy than those of their victims?