In the article I read from the http://austin.ynn.com titled Prosecutors, MADD Team Up On Drunken Driving Legislation, I found it tough to believe that the non profit organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving teamed up with law enforcement officials to ask law makers to pass two bills of of legislation they think is going to help save lives. This organization has been trying for 18 years and is going to continue to try to get state legislature to pass laws allowing police officers to enforce what they call sobriety checkpoints.
Out of all the states in the country, Texas has seen the most deaths in result of drunken driving incident. They believe that having these checkpoints would stop drunk driving and from the evidence shown, Lewis who was arguing for this law said, "Checkpoints would reduce the number of fatalities by 20 percent." If this law is to be passed, police would be permitted to establish checkpoints on roads stopping drunken drivers.
Meanwhile waiting this fight, the judicial end of things proposed another bill giving deferred adjudication and treatment to the first time offenders. Another argument Lewis had was that he believed we were just housing young citizens of drunk driving for their first offense to their 3rd offense when instead of us giving them the real treatment they need. I have personally never been in a drunken driving situation thank god, but I can't possibly see this law being passed seeing the downside of things. Although I do want to help prevent drunk driving from happening, I feel there to be more cons then pros in this situation and it will just bring other unrelated issued to surface.
I do agree that this issue will bring up many other problems, with the "deferred adjudication and treatment". On the other hand there is a great positive, the possibility of saving 200 people a year, that sounds like a good decision to make. On the MADD website, it states that there is more than 30 other states that already have this bill passed. It also has a data based on the Texas Drunk Driving, and those numbers are scary, besides the possible downfall that this bill might make, I think it should pass solely based on the data shown, but its worth looking into.
ReplyDeleteMy colleague Lauren Klein discusses an article from Austin YNN about passing two pieces of legislation that could possibly save lives. Mother's Against Drunk Driving (MADD) have asked the legislature to pass laws allowing police officers to enforce sobriety checkpoints so they can check for drunk drivers. It is said that these checkpoints could save 200 lives here in Texas each year. I personally think this is a good idea. People can easily get into their car after a night of drinking, cause a car accident, and kill themselves and others. I don't think enough is being done to prevent this issue and any possible prevention should be attempted. How will we know if this works if it is never tried? There should also be more punishment for those convicted of drunk driving. It is easy for someone to continue to get DUI's. How many is too many? ONE! But there are cases where some individuals have 8+. I think drunk driving is a big enough issue that any means of prevention is necessary. Put these checkpoints in place and let's see if we can save lives.
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