Time to Get Tough on Drunk Drivers
* If we are serious about fighting drunk driving (“Don’t Let Up in Fighting DUI,” April 16 editorial), then we must stop giving silly little slap-on-the-wrist sentences for that offense.
It’s obvious from cases like Ronald Cram’s convictions that not only has our so-called criminal justice system gone completely bonkers, but a jail sentence or “rehabilitation” is useless as a deterrent to the career drunks.
Even more useless is suspending a driver’s license because the bad ones always drive anyway. They know that since the police can no longer make random checks for licenses their chances of being caught are negligible. So the problem devolves into quickly identifying the dangerous career drunk drivers and then permanently removing them from our streets.
On the first conviction, just a stiff jail sentence (one year) would be enough punishment because there is a reasonably high probability that the offender is basically a good person who, if properly impressed, will not repeat the crime.
A second conviction positively identifies that person as a dangerous driver, and we sober citizens are entitled to a 100% positive assurance that that person will never again get behind the wheel of any car, drunk or sober. If it can’t be done any other way (and I don’t see how it can), then that offender must go to jail for life. Anything less is trivializing a serious crime.
An added advantage of such a law would be the fact that not only would follow-on offenses by “bad” drunks be totally eliminated, but first offenses by and convictions of “good” drunk drivers would also certainly be greatly reduced. Remember that for every drunk driving conviction there are probably dozens to hundreds of offenses.
JOHN HAMAKER
Laguna Niguel
* Reading “Open Letter to My Dad, Ronald W. Cram” (April 19) opened wounds that have never completely healed after more than 30 years.
My father was a Ronald Cram also. To the best of my knowledge, he was never arrested for drunk driving, but certainly should have been.
Nothing was more important to him than his beer and smoking. I remember as a teenager waking up at 2 a.m. when I heard the key turn in the lock and knowing by the sound of his footsteps and how he was breathing whether or not there would be fighting and throwing of objects in the kitchen. Unfortunately he was at my high school graduation--drunk. Drinkers cause problems for their families and everyone who knows them, and unfortunately generations are poisoned by them.
SUSAN L. BARRETT
Rossmoor
