What I Think Should Be Done About DWI

DWI stands for driving while intoxicated or impaired. It means that you are drunk while driving a car. On average in America someone is killed every 40 minutes by a drunk driver. Drunk driving is extremely dangerous for the health of the person driving and for the other people on the road. Accidents involving drunk drivers kill around 13,000 people a year. It is a very costly traffic offence, for the people in the accident and for taxpayers.
"Alcohol-related crashes in the United States cost the public an estimated $114.3 billion in 2000, including $51.1 billion in monetary costs and an estimated $63.2 billion in quality of life losses. People other than the drinking driver paid $71.6 billion of the alcohol-related crash bill, which is 63 percent of the total cost of these crashes."*

Most of the public think that drinking while driving is a serious concern. A lot of people are in support of requiring drivers who have been convicted of drunk driving to use preventive measures like an ignition interlock device, which makes you blow into a tube to see how much alcohol is in your breathe. If it is too high it will not let you start the car.147

I think another good thing to do would be if someone is drinking at a bar and the bartender knows that that customer has had too much to drink, that he (the bartender) is required to call a cab for the person. The person should not be allowed to drive. The bartender could take the person's keys and make sure that he did not drive away. Then when the cab gets there he could make sure that the person got in the cab and give him his keys back. If the bartender could not do that then maybe the bars should hire someone to do that. It would save a lot of people heartache and loss. The bar may complain about having to hire someone else but in the long run it would pay off for the city.

Another thing that I think should be done is stiffer sentences for people who have been arrested for drunk driving. They got off too easy sometimes. I think for your first offence you should have to spend at least a 9 months in prison and pay a $2,000 fine. And it should get steeper from there. I think that if you have been convicted for drunk driving 3 times then you need to be in jail for at least 6 years. It may seem kind of harsh but it only takes driving drunk one time to endanger the life of someone else.

*(All statics by found on http://www.madd.org/Drunk-Driving/Drunk-Driving/Statistics.aspx. The website of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving.)