What to do about bad drivers

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Anyone who knows Penobscot County District Attorney Chris Almy at all knows he can be a bit excitable.

People who have known him for a long time, including a few defense attorneys in town, know just what buttons to push to start the ball rolling. I’m pretty darned good at it myself.

There are just a few rules.

One: Back up, because his arms tend to flail, and sometimes he jumps around a little. Two: Don’t bother to try to interrupt. He’s no longer listening. And three: Even though he’s screaming, don’t take it personally. His anger usually is not directed at you.

A lot of the time it is directed at the happenings in Augusta.

Such was the case when I spoke to him this week asking for his opinion on the latest furor over the state’s worst drivers.

I happened to be vacationing in Scarborough a couple of weeks ago when Tina Turcotte of Scarborough was killed when her car was struck from behind by a tractor-trailer truck driven by Scott Hewitt of Caribou.

As Hewitt’s shameful driving record of 63 convictions and 23 license suspensions was discovered and plastered across the front pages of every newspaper in the state, it was clear that a fury was afoot.

Thus, of course, a task force was born.

Please don’t misunderstand. The anger, the frustration are all justified, and I’m certainly not faulting Gov. John Baldacci for getting some people together to take a look at the issue.

The problem begins when those touched and angered and saddened by Turcotte’s death and the circumstances surrounding it allow emotion to guide their decision-making.

Steeper fines and more jail time. That certainly may be one part of the solution. Yet one has to wonder whether the same fellow who pays no mind to the fact that his license is suspended would feel any need to pay his fine. There are approximately $15 million in unpaid fines in this state. What’s a few more dollars?

Jail time, of course, will certainly keep them off the road and maybe even serve as a deterrent. So will the taxpayer be willing to cough up the extra cash for the increase in the jail population? History answers that with a resounding no.

“This is not a new problem. It’s just that the light bulb has gone off in Augusta,” Almy remarked this week. “But I’ll tell you one thing: If they think there is an easy solution to this, they are wrong.”

This is where he started to get a bit animated.

“If they want to start putting these people who get arrested for operating after suspension in jail, well, they better be willing to build a lot more jails,” he exclaimed loudly.

What about a law allowing you to impound their cars, I asked.

“That’s not even worth talking about. The money and the paperwork involved … and then half the time it’s not even their car they’re driving, and then you have to prove that the person who owns the car knew that a suspended driver was going to drive the car. It’s not even worth considering. Besides, what are we going to do with all those junkers anyway?” he shouted.

We’re off!

What about the states that place a special sticker on the license plates of drivers who have numerous driving infractions? The sticker allows police officers to pull the car over with no probable cause.

“Oh, come on now!” he barked. “They’ll just drive a different car or they’ll take the darn thing off. So then what we have is a new charge to prove: removing a mandated sticker from a license plate. I’ll tell ya, this always ends up falling on the police officers, the prosecutors and the courts, and they want us to do it all with smaller and smaller budgets and fewer people. The government is not going to solve this problem.”

Last week Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion went before the Legislature’s Public Safety Committee and said his deputies staked out the homes of the county’s 12 worst habitual offenders. The deputies sat there waiting for these guys to get behind the wheel and drive away.

There were no arrests, but they did watch some of the offenders drive away as passengers in other vehicles.

Here’s the part I loved.

“His presentation drew praise from lawmakers and Maine State Police Col. Craig Poulin and led to a preliminary discussion of whether similar programs could be set up statewide,” said an Associated Press article that appeared in the Friday, Aug. 12, edition of the Bangor Daily News. “‘To me, this is what we ought to be doing,’ said Rep. Richard Sykes, R-Harrison.”

Show me the money, Rep. Sykes.

Now Matt Dunlap, our relatively new secretary of state, is aware he’s being viewed as a bit of a “wet blanket” about this whole issue.

“People don’t think I’m on board as much as I should be. I really feel, though, that we need to look at this calmly and sensibly so that we can make positive changes, not just changes for the sake of making changes,” he said.

Dunlap was on his way to a meeting of the task force on Thursday.

“I think we can make some needed changes on the liability laws surrounding those companies who hire independent truckers who have suspended licenses,” he said. “You can get a person’s driving record on the Internet now, and there really is no excuse for a company to allow an unlicensed or suspended driver to haul their product. That, to me, is sensible legislation that we can recommend.”

That makes sense and probably so does a look at increasing the penalties for the worst offenders.

It’s easy and feels good to seek vengeance when such a tragedy occurs. But vengeance needs to be checked at the door for those in charge of making policy.