Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 21, 1993 TAG: 9307210151
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"We are very lucky to have this child," Lyn Atkins told the House Courts of Justice Committee on Tuesday.
The committee was in Roanoke for a public hearing on the problem of people driving with suspended licenses - drivers like the one who crashed into Kimberly Atkins' car last month and sent her flying through the windshield.
Atkins survived with broken bones and will soon walk away from her wheelchair.
But during three hours of often emotional testimony, the committee heard mostly about people who were not so lucky.
In the Roanoke region, at least five people have died in the past nine months in accidents caused by suspended or revoked drivers.
About 150 people - third-graders, senior citizens, police officers, rescue workers, recovering alcoholics, grieving parents, preachers, teachers, truck drivers, teen-agers, grandmothers and others who all have shared the road with suspended drivers - offered their suggestions on how those lives might have been saved.
Many blamed legislators for failing to pass tough laws, and judges for failing to enforce the ones already on the books.
"Enough is enough," said John Markey of People Against Impaired Drivers. "Don't let our loved ones become a statistic before you do something."
Some of the suggestions surface almost every year at the General Assembly; others were new. Among them:
Seizing or impounding the cars of drunken or suspended drivers, a law that Virginia repealed in 1989 because of administrative and financial reasons.
Making the punishment tougher for suspended and drunken drivers. How can a Franklin County man receive a 22-year sentence for stealing cigarettes while a drunken driver in Salem gets nine months for killing a mother and her unborn child, Gene Hartsell asked.
Labeling the license plates of suspended drivers; suspending the licenses of drunken drivers before they go to court; reducing the blood-alcohol content to 0.08 percent for drunken driving; conducting more sobriety checkpoints; stopping the sale of cold beer; and eliminating television advertising for alcohol were also suggested.
Some of the most pointed criticism was aimed at the legislators themselves.
"You appear to be more like a club than a lawmaking body," said Joyce Baldwin of Virginians Opposing Drunken Driving in Virginia Beach. She cited a newspaper report that lawmakers attended 43 cocktail parties during a 47-day session.
Del. James Almand, chairman of the Courts of Justice Committee, said the suggestions will be taken to heart. "We want to look at laws in Florida and Ohio . . . for solutions that Virginia doesn't have," he said.
The scope of the problem recently was revealed by DMV figures showing there are 665,000 suspended drivers in Virginia - about one for every eight motorists.
"That was a real eye-opener," Almand said.
A subcommittee - Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton; Steve Agee, R-Salem; Roscoe Reynolds, D-Martinsville and Joseph Johnson, D-Abingdon - was appointed to follow up on the crowd's suggestions.
The ultimate challenge will be to forge potential legislation from some of the raw emotion and anger that flowed from Tuesday's hearing:
Carrie Molokach, the teen-ager who was to be Geoffrey Pelton's first-ever prom date he was killed on the Roy Webber Highway by a habitual offender.
"I myself have purchased alcohol at a local store," Molokach said. Now, she sees to it that her friends do not drive drunk.
Tim Long, a volunteer rescue worker whose fiancee and grandmother were killed by a drunken driver in Montgomery County.
"I've seen so much of this. We try to get these people to a hospital and get them taken care of. Then they go to court and the judge says `that'll be a $50 fine' . . . and then they're outside to drive again." Long said his fiancee "despised people who drink and drive, and she died for what she hated the most."
Ken Smith, who teaches a driver training program and knows that drunken and suspended drivers are not the only dangers on the road.
Many untrained drivers "look at cars as appliances," he said, warning legislators not to become fixated on drunken drivers in seeking a "quick, politically correct fix."
George Pelton, who was still grieving the death of his son when 9-year-old Dustin Washburn was killed by a suspended driver several weeks later.
"Why has it taken [Geoffrey Pelton's] death and the death of an innocent 9-year-old boy to get your attention?" he asked.
by CNB