From Sen. Nancy Jacobs:
It’s ironic that what we call an “accident” frequently is not an accident at all. People who drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol make a choice that can result in serious injury or death. If you or someone you know has been affected by such a situation, consulting an Orange County motorcycle accident lawyer can provide crucial support and guidance. If the accident caused a fatality, the victim’s family may contact wrongful death law firms and file a lawsuit. In cases like these, a trusted and reliable Detroit accident attorney can help ensure that victims and their families receive the justice and compensation they deserve.
Right now in Maryland the maximum penalty for driving drunk and causing life threatening injuries is stiffer than the same crime by someone high on drugs. This makes no sense. I have introduced a bill that would make those penalties the same.
A terrible crash in Ocean City last December shows why it’s important to penalize those who drive drugged with the same severity. A driver, high on PCP, slammed his pickup truck into the back of a car carrying a mother and her one year old child. The prosecutor says the brakes were never applied. The two victims were thrown 100 feet and sustained life threatening injuries. After more than two months at Johns Hopkins Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, doctors still don’t know if the child’s brain damage is permanent.
We have taken great strides towards protecting Marylanders from drunk drivers with tougher laws in recent years. For example, if someone is convicted twice within ten years for driving drunk, they lose their license. Causing life-threatening injury to someone could earn a drunk driver three years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine. But the maximum penalty for a drugged driver causing that same suffering is just two years and a three thousand dollar fine.
A person who decides to get high on any substance and get behind the wheel is terribly selfish and they can cause a lifetime of suffering. Let’s make sure they get the time they deserve.
Sincerely,
Sen. Nancy Jacobs
I agree, though the sentences that actually get handed out in court are pretty ridiculous, even when a crash is involved or the driver has already had a DUI (or multiple DUI’s.) Most of the time it’s just alcohol classes, a suspended jail sentence, and most of the fine is suspended (even on repeat offenders or when they cause a crash that sent someone to the hospital.) Even if it’s just a weekend or two for a first offense not involving a crash (and more time than that if a crash is involved or it’s a repeat offender) would be more appropriate than what typically occurs now.
It would also be nice if judges actually enforced the part of the law that imposes additional penalties for refusing to take a chemical test to determine the BAC or level of drugs in the driver’s system. It’s supposed to be a extra 2 months in jail and/or a $500 fine. I haven’t heard of a single judge anywhere in MD actually imposing that penalty after finding someone guilty of a DUI or even bringing it up as part of a suspended sentence.
Personally, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to refuse the test period. Part of signing for your driver’s license is an agreement that you will submit to a chemical test (breath or blood depending on the circumstances…and medical personnel shouldn’t be able to refuse to take a blood sample from an intoxicated driver who was transported to a hospital either…that commonly happens at several hospitals in MD.)
You should also consider talking while driving as that has the same effect on driving as being drunk.
Hi Proud – not disagreeing with you, but is there research to back up that statement? I’d like to see it.
At first blush I think, though, there is a difference between distracted driving and operating a vehicle under the influence of a chemical/alcohol. While distractions can be avoided or minimized – perhaps driving alone or not conversing with your passengers – as compared to influence of a substance that inhibits one’s ability to control motor-functions. I don’t believe a distraction while driving is necessarily always a partner with some mischievious intent. I do believe being under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol and behind the wheel does have a mischievious intent.
“In January 2004, at 4:00 p.m., in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a 20-year-old woman ran a red light while talking on a cell phone. The driver’s vehicle slammed into another vehicle crossing with the green light directly in front of her. The vehicle she hit was not the first car through the intersection, it was the third or fourth. The police investigation deter¬mined the driver never touched her brakes and was traveling 48 mph when she hit the other vehicle. The crash cost the life of a 12-year-old boy. Witnesses told investigators that the driver was not looking down, not dialing the phone, or texting. She was observed looking straight out the windshield talking on her cell phone as she sped past four cars and a school bus stopped in the other south bound lane of traffic. Researchers have called this crash a classic case of inattention blindness caused by the cognitive distraction of a cell phone conversation.
Vision is the most important sense for safe driving. Yet, drivers using hands-free phones (and those using handheld phones) have a tendency to “look at” but not “see” objects. Estimates indicate that drivers using cell phones look but fail to see up to 50 percent of the information in their driving environment. Distracted drivers experience what researchers call inattention blindness, similar to that of tunnel vision. Drivers are looking out the windshield, but they do not process everything in the roadway environment that they must know to effectively monitor their surroundings, seek and identify potential haz¬ards, and respond to unexpected situations.
Hands-free devices often are seen as a solution to the risks of driver distraction because they help eliminate two obvious risks – visual, looking away from the road and manual, removing your hands off of the steering wheel. However, a third type of distraction can occur when using cell phones while driving – cognitive, taking your mind off the road. Hands-free devices do not eliminate cognitive distraction.
A University of Utah driving simulator study found drivers using cell phones had slower reaction times than drivers impaired by alcohol at a .08 blood alcohol concentration; the legal intoxication limit.59 Braking time also was delayed for drivers talking on hands-free and handheld phones.” Understanding the distracted brain Why driving while using hands-free cell phones is risky behavior National Safety Council White Paper March 2010 © 2010 National Safety Council. All rights reserved.
Ummm…good luck making “talking while driving” a traffic violation. Taking the path you’re proposing would mean that we’d basically have to make it illegal to do ANYTHING behind the wheel other than focusing 100% on driving which is not practical to do and quite frankly dangerous as it would quickly lead to fatigue and drivers nodding off if they actually tried to do that. The cell phone ban is good (though it should be a primary offense, not a secondary offense), but there is a definite limit to what the government can and should be legislating, though based on your comments elsewhere I’m guessing you’ve yet to see the government regulation that you didn’t like.
It’s no where near as bad as drunk driving or driving while high on drugs (including and especially prescription drugs….which in my experience those people are usually far more impaired than the average drunk driver…the equivalent of being well over a .20 BAC in many cases.) It’s not even in the same class.
I think he was being sarcastic. What good is a ban on cellphone use and text messaging when people have cars loaded with cup holders and they’re consuming their Whoppers? While I feel the text messaging is a no brainer (and I still see people do it), so is applying makeup. And if I drive a stick – how is that different from holding a cellphone to my ear? Or how is hands free cellphone use different from talking with passengers in the back seat while driving? I’d love to outlaw stupidity, but that requires some subjectivity, and every now and then each of us will fall prey to that moment in time when we are not at our best.
I knew that if we both stayed on here long enough I would something to agree with David Porter about. I agree totally with you on this one Dave. My feeling is that if someone can talk on the phone, read a paper, drink coffee and fix eyebrows or shave, while driving safely – leave him or her alone. On the other hand if someone drives poorly, for whatever reason haul them off the road until he or she can demonstrate some degree of proficiency.
Thank you Arturro. There is hope for both of us, and maybe for the rest we occasionally disagree with.
Senator…we, who actually work for a living and keep this economy moving, all know that the law only pertains to those who don’t have the funds to defend themselves against state and county tyranny…if by some very strange twist of the law, state and county servants were pulled over and alcohol and blood tested while driving on a regular basis, there wouldn’t be anyone left to do their dubious jobs!