Our New, "Tougher" Drunken Driving Law

Our New, "Tougher" Drunken Driving Law

By Perry Gardner, East Canaan

Well, Connecticut now has the "tougher" drunken driving standards that some significant portion of the population wanted. The standards now catch almost anyone who weighs 100 lbs. or less and has one drink, and lowers the number of drinks people in all weight classes can handle, so I suppose we have made the law "tougher." The law change also eliminates the mandatory harsher penalties for drivers with blood alcohol levels over 0.16%, the ones in my opinion who are the BIG hazards on the road. So in a sense of fairness, we are now treating everyone the same if they drive over the .08% limit.

With tongue in cheek, I propose that we consider using the same logic and changes in standards for speed limits. Let’s reduce the speed limits by 5 mph across the board to make the roads safer, and let’s also eliminate the increasingly harsher penalties for exceeding the speed limits by bigger increments that now exist. That way the penalty would be the same for driving 35 in a 30-mph zone as for driving 80 in a 30-mph zone. In a sense of fairness, we would be treating everyone the same with these "tougher" speeding regulations.

If the logic we have adopted for drunken driving restrictions will make the roads safer, so should the same logic when applied to speed control.