Wichita DUI Crash leads to town hall meeting.
A recent DUI related crash in Wichita Kansas brings concerned citizens together to discuss the future DUI laws in the state of Kansas. After an alleged DUI related crash kills a mother and her daughter near a Wichita school, community members gathered together to discuss some new approaches to DUI legislation that would close loopholes that allow people to continue to drive intoxicated. Increased monitoring at a state level and lifetime requirements to ignition interlock for habitual drunk drivers would be a good start in my opinion.
Many people in this video clip suggest that permanently suspending an offender after a third conviction would help. This would only inject hundreds if not thousands of non- licensed, non-insured drivers onto our streets. The reason we have thousands of driving on suspended cases each year is because people don't quit driving when they lose their license. They still have kids to take to school, jobs to go to, and groceries to get, doctors appointment, treatment, AA and probation meetings to attend. In a state like Kansas with many communities not large enough for public transportation, suspending a license permanently is all but a guarantee that they will be driving, just without a license or insurance.
The statistics that we need are the ones from the Kansas DMV for the years that we have had the ignition interlock laws in place. We need to be able to show the percentage of people that are re-offending with the ignition interlock on their vehicle in Kansas. I do not have these numbers but I will be requesting them. The only safe way to put a habitual violator back on the road is to have an ignition interlock device in place and make the penalty for driving a non-interlock vehicle tremendously steep.
The point I am getting at is that I agree that there are changes that need to be made, but believing that someone is not going to continue driving because you suspend their license or take away their vehicle is just being blind to the facts, and statistics for that matter. If we are going to have these offenders on our streets we at least need a device installed that will make sure that their vehicle will not start if they are drinking.