A California woman was convicted of second-degree murder this week in the hit-and-run deaths of two children who were killed while walking on a sidewalk. By any definition, this was an avoidable tragedy. The woman was driving under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs. What makes the case even more tragic is that the woman had four previous drunken driving convictions.
I don't have the answer but I do know that we must devise laws in this land that would permanently ban drivers with that type of abuse record. Four drunk driving convictions should result in a permanent, lifetime ban from driving. I don't care what the circumstances are or how many years have passed since the last conviction.
The woman's license was suspended but that obviously had no impact on her getting behind the wheel of a car. She now faces 30 years in prison and that may be appropriate. But something must be done to assure that drivers like this are unable to get behind the wheel.
If we can put a monitoring device on an individual and track their movement, surely there is some technology that would deny driving privileges to these convicted drunks.
Part of the problem is that the law allows drunk driving convictions to be expunged or removed from your record after a period of time. But in this case and many others, the problem of drinking and driving is not removed. The addiction that puts a drunk driver behind the wheel often remains regardless of the time frame.
If we don't start putting teeth into drunk driving violations like we do drug violations, these tragedies will be repeated. We owe that much to the two children struck on the sidewalk in California.