Has message dimmed on drunken driving?

Residents of Chester County should consider themselves fortunate to have police patrolling the county’s highways who have made it a central part of their mission to keep those who are driving drunk or otherwise impaired off the road. That dedication was m

This is an issue that we fear will continue to plague us until the message sinks in: Don’t drink and drive.

The numbers speak for themselves of the plan’s success. Last week, at the conclusion of the weekend effort, the state police announced that a total of 124 DUI arrests were made by state and local police through the vehicle stops. A total of 127 state troopers and municipal police officers from 23 county departments participated in the specialized training and enforcement program across the county, according to state police.

That being said, we find the numbers themselves appalling, and disconcerting in what they implicitly have to say about the decades long effort to educate, instruct, and steer drivers away from getting behind the wheel when they have been drinking. To think that even after so many years have been spent hammering the message home that drinking and driving is unacceptable, more than 120 drunk drivers were found on our roads on two nights is unconscionable.

Drunk driving laws were toughened in the 1980s for the sole purpose of putting it in the public’s mind that such behavior is criminal. Mandatory sentences were established — the thought being that should drivers become aware that they were very likely to go to prison if they drove while intoxicated they would take the prudent course of not doing so. As part of sentencing here in our county, those who are arrested for DUI must, as part of their ultimate sentence, enroll in and complete a safe driving course that will in- still in them what they apparently had not come to accept. “Don’t drink and drive.”

Are we to assume now that even after all this time that message is lost? To think that police were able to identify 124 drunk drivers over two days leads us to the conclusion that there are far more drivers breaking the law out there, and that the current system of carrots and stick is not working to ensure public safety.

Illustrative of the failure is the case of a Pottstown woman who was involved in a violent crash outside West Chester several months ago. The woman, who had been arrested in 2009 for drunk driving and completed the county’s alternative sentencing program that kept her out of jail in exchange for rehabilitative measures, had taken the wheel of her Jeep Wrangler at 10 a.m. when the amount of alcohol in her blood from drinking was almost three times the legal limit for DUI. She careened down Route 322 and collided with another car in a force so dangerous that the car was nearly obliterated. To say that the fact the couple in the car survived is a miracle understates the case.

The offender in this case was no monster without care or compassion for others. She is a college graduate, and appeared overcome with emotion last week in court as the mothers of the two victims told of how their children had suffered from her crimes. But still it remains clear that she had not gotten the message about her behavior.

The answer to this lack of success, for some, is increased prison time for offenders and harsher punishments all around. But we note that with any such change will come costs; county prisons such as ours are already near the breaking point. Add those 124 people arrested to the cells of our prisons and the price taxpayers pay to combat the problem will surely rise. This is an issue that we fear will continue to plague us until the message sinks in: Don’t drink and drive.

The answer to this lack of success, for some, is increased prison time for offenders and harsher punishments all around.