Six strikes is too many for driver offenses

Once again, Pa. finds itself behind the curve. In 44 other states, drivers can be imprisoned on the first or second offense for driving with a suspended license.

Pennsylvania’s current “six strike” law for driving with a suspended license needs to be amended.

It’s hard to fathom, especially if you’re one of those people who gets night sweats if your state inspection is a day or two overdue or you just realized your driver’s license is about to expire.

Not to worry, license scofflaws. Pennsylvania — at least when it comes to license renewal — is most forgiving.

Grace is good, but not in this case.

If anything positive has come out of the recent crash in which a driver allegedly slammed into a Lancaster Mennonite school bus and took off, it’s the attention Pennsylvania’s law has generated.

“I’m shocked, and I’m appalled he had that many citations and he was still driving,” Republican state Rep. Keith Greiner told LNP on Friday. “We need to try and get these people off the road.”

Greiner is working on a comprehensive rewrite of the state’s DUI laws.

On Tuesday, he told LNP that he would like the issue of unlicensed drivers addressed in either his pending legislation or a standalone bill to reduce the penalty threshold for repeat offenders.

Once again, the commonwealth finds itself behind the curve. In 44 other states, drivers can be imprisoned on the first or second offense for driving with a suspended license.

The current “six-strike” law is simply unacceptable and needs to be amended.

As LNP’s Susan Baldrige reported, people who drive with suspended licenses are many more times likely to be in an accident and about three times more likely to cause a fatal crash than those who are properly licensed, according to data collected by the Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman told LNP that 50 to 75 percent of Pennsylvania drivers who have had their licenses taken away for reckless driving or DUI continue to drive.

That is an outrage. And Greiner is right. These people need to be off the road.

A handful of states go a step further and impound a violator’s car. This, along with possible imprisonment after the first or second violation, is a sensible approach. It’s not a guarantee — the bus crasher’s car was registered to his parents — but we need to construct as many obstacles as possible between an unlicensed driver and the road.

Instead Pennsylvania law, as it stands, paves the way to potential disaster.

Chris Demko, whose 18-year-old daughter, Meredith, was killed in 2014 by an unlicensed driver who was also drunk and high, told LNP that he wants penalties for those who harbor unlicensed drivers and enable them to keep driving.

“There has to be some penalty for knowingly allowing a person who is not licensed to drive a car,” Demko said.

All potential remedies — prison, vehicle forfeiture, penalties for enablers, computer tracking systems that could be used to identify drivers who have had their licenses suspended, as Demko suggested — need to be considered here.

It is sad that it has taken an accident in which 16 people, 14 of them children, were injured to get everyone’s attention.

And it’s tragic that Chris Demko has to wonder what might have been had the Legislature acted sooner to keep off the road people like the man who killed his daughter.

Pennsylvania can right a long-standing wrong by putting a system in place that holds accountable unlicensed drivers who disregard the law.

And we hope lawmakers from both parties can work together to come up with legislation to that end.

If the image of a battered school bus — windshield shattered, lying on its side — doesn’t inspire change, nothing will.