DRUNK DRIVERS

Here is an excerpt from ‘The Highest Priority,’ an excellent piece on drunk drivers posted by The Gadfly on PACOVILLA Corrections blog:

BRACING FOR IMPACT
By Greg ‘The Gadfly’ Doyle

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
November 11, 2012

In the days of my long tenure as a graveyard patrol sergeant, field work often required me to respond to the highest priority calls—those involving life and death situations, or calls with greatest potential for injury. With only six officers to cover 70,000 residents tucked into fifteen square miles of real estate, my challenge was to stay in contact with my team and make the most efficient use of personnel, time and resources in order to get the job done. My role as a supervisor was to provide support to the officers handling the calls, assist them in decision-making, and allocate additional resources as needed. And until help arrived, more often than not I would assume certain tasks (such as traffic or crowd control) until more officers arrived on scene to take up the assigned tasks.

One of the worst aspects of graveyard work was dealing with drunks in varying states of intoxication. The only two times I had to deploy a taser (a stun gun device, which became available toward the end of my career) was when dealing with raging drunks: thoughtless, self-absorbed, uninhibited, uncooperative, and uncontrollably stupid. Of the few times I was spat upon while in uniform, drunks were on the spitting end. Some of the most unpleasant and uncomfortable situations I had to deal with involved local politicians, off-duty cops, and my relatives who were stopped and arrested by my officers for driving while intoxicated. Fortunately, by the time I made sergeant, California law had made it mandatory for anyone driving under the influence (regardless of station or occupation) to be arrested, or cited for the same if hospitalized as the result of driving drunk and causing an accident—without exception.

In other words, by rule of law, the State of California placed the highest priority on drunk driving because of public outcry in the wake of so much pain, suffering, injury and death caused by thoughtless individuals, who too often compromise their ability to think clearly due to consumption of alcoholic beverages and believe they can operate a vehicle safely. The sanctions for those arrested for drunk driving in California remain quite high. Aside from a permanent arrest record, there are fines, attorney and court costs, car insurance sanctions, jail time, suspension of driving privileges, and in some cases towing costs. The penalties skyrocket for repeat drunk driving arrests or causing injury or death as the result of a traffic collision while intoxicated. A fourth conviction for driving under the influence is charged as a felony.

Anecdotal observation from my personal experiences in the field remind me that the majority of drunk drivers I dealt with remained relatively unscathed as the result of their involvement in a traffic collision. In the few traffic accidents I have been involved in, in my lifetime, I recall that when I saw the collision was about to occur, I began bracing for impact. Without effort, my arms locked on the steering wheel and my muscles tightened as my focus was locked on what was in my path. Drunk drivers are generally distracted and preoccupied with their intoxication. They rarely see the accident coming because drunk drivers are unaware that they themselves are the accident waiting to happen. It is the state of mind of the driver under the influence of a powerful chemical that wipes away reason, wisdom, clarity of thought, and the ability to react and behave with diligence, which (coupled with a fast moving vehicle) makes a drunk driver dangerous to anyone in their path.

And in many cases where I dealt with a drunk driver, there were intoxicated passengers in the vehicle during the stop. Imagine a car full of people where no one was capable of safely operating a vehicle! Perhaps you’d never see them coming, a car filled with carefree drunks on a path to potentially run you down on the roadway or sidewalk, or plow into your parked car or residence. But if you did see them coming, if you found yourself bracing for impact, would there be enough time to move to safety, to minimize injury to yourself and others with you? A short prayer might be all you could utter in that instance—and then the outcome would be in God’s hands.