No lenience for road carnage

Speeding drunks smashing into innocent drivers in head-on collisions because the drunks have crossed into oncoming traffic, pop up in this newspaper almost daily. The Aug. 14 issue, for instance, reported that yet another rogue driver faces a vehicular homicide charge for slamming headlong into – and killing – a 57-year-old woman. He was allegedly ripped and going 70 to 75 in a 35-mile zone at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Stories like this have become so common, as have the obligatory plea bargains and lame attempts by seemingly sophomoric lawyers to prosecute these criminals that the citizenry accept them as if the perpetrators had stolen comic books from a supermarket rather than maimed or killed someone’s spouse, parent, child or friend.

My wife and I have lived in many communities coast to coast. We have never lived among such highway carnage as regularly occurs here, nor among juries and judges who, in meting out punishment, seem to commonly treat such tragedies as mere errors.

Similarly, why haven’t area legislators banned potentially lethal “texting” and cell phone use while driving? The telecommunications lobbyists love us for our recklessness – but what about human lives?

Tim Henney

Sandpoint