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Draconian laws are needed to stop impaired driving here.
Severe measures work in Scandinavia. Our Swedish friends visiting Maui confirmed impaired driving in Sweden is virtually nonexistent. If citizens are caught driving while impaired, they face lengthy stays in jail. The penalties are severe and essentially nonnegotiable.
Here, drunk drivers get fines, wrist slaps and chance after chance, which results in habitual offenders who are completely undeterred by fines, license suspensions or revocations, as The Maui News article (Feb. 2) on habitual DUI revealed.
Why don't we have such laws here? Businesses that make money selling booze fight them and our lawmakers don't have the spine to pass them.
The reality about severe laws is that when they are needed -- as in the area of impaired driving -- and they're put into effect, they don't lead to cataclysmic aftereffects. They simply become established law and people learn to obey them.
Alcohol drinkers learn that if they're going to drink, they have to have designated drivers, or call cabs or use other transportation choices. They learn to avoid at all costs driving while impaired, period, end of problem, end of deaths and countless injuries from drunk driving.
Maui County Mayor Mike Victorino wants to reduce driving deaths in Maui County to zero within 10 years. Victorino and other elected officials need to grow a collective spine and pass drunk driving laws like those in Scandinavia, and finally end the scourge of continuous deaths and injuries caused by drunk drivers here.
Jerome Kellner
Kahului