
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 11, 1992                   TAG: 9203110337
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DRUNKEN DEATH

THAT WAS some pillow fight they had in the General Assembly Saturday. Feathers flying everywhere, as the fun and games that are usually the order of the legislature's final day turned mean-minded.

Not for nothing did Shawsville Sen. Madison Marye hoist a sign that read "SEND POLICE." It was a parliamentary imbroglio, out of control.

And the fight didn't end before somebody got hurt. Down with the debris on the Senate floor was an anti-drunken-driving bill that, evidence in other states has shown, could save hundreds of lives.

The so-called administrative license-revocation bill would have meant, quite simply, that those arrested for drunken driving would immediately lose their driving licenses. Adequate safeguards were included, such as the right to a quick administrative hearing. And, mind you, only those who fail sobriety tests or refuse to take them would be affected. If they win their case, the license is restored.

But meantime, the promise of swift and certain punishment for those who drive while intoxicated is one of the most effective ways thus far discovered to reduce the carnage caused by drunken drivers on the highways. Thirty states have administrative license-revocation laws on their books and have seen annual declines of up to 12 percent in highway fatalities.

Attorney General Mary Sue Terry made it the centerpiece of her 1992 legislative package. Differing versions of the booze-it-and-lose-it proposal had already been approved, by sizable margins, in both House and Senate. As the session wore on, revisions were made that seemed actually to improve its prospects of becoming law.

But then, on Saturday, the proposal got caught up in the blows of last-minute score-settling - between the House and Senate; between Republicans and Democrats - over matters that had not a whit to do with the anti-drunken-driving bill itself.

With its defeat, somebody got hurt. Not Terry. She suffered a legislative rebuff. It was the public, and Virginians whose lives might have been saved, that the legislators socked it to.

by CNB