DUI

The triangular equation of "drunk driving" involves three parties who are responsible in creating the problem, and who also have the potential of being part of a solution, of the high number of traffic fatalities that occur each year due to drunk drivers. State governments, liquor establishment owners, and the drunk driver all contribute to the grim national statistics that represent the numbers of fatalities yearly due to the victims of drivers who get behind the wheel while intoxicated. While grass-roots organizations like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers), SADD (Students Against Drunk Drivers), and RID (Remove Intoxicated Drivers) have combined to have a major impact on drunk driving legislation in all fifty states over the past decade, often these efforts were and still are aimed at one leg of the drunk driving "cause(s)" triangle (legislation designed to raise the level of punishment severity against drunk drivers). For this reason, more severe penalties against the drunk driver (including proposed legislation by MADD to make drunk driving a "federal" as opposed to a "criminal" offense) have emerged, but the problem actually escalated in 1995 for the first time in a decade of effort to the contrary, despite the massive efforts of grass roots groups with conviction:

s who can probably confess to being behind the wheel of a motor vehicle with BAC's of .08% or higher. However, many states feel that since first time DUI motorists are more likely to repeat DUI offenses than non-DUI motorists, that nothing short of taking their license away will prevent their negative social behavior. In Illinois, the state legislature is proposing even more severe penalties than MADD's newly proposed amendment, "Joining the leading edge of states getting tougher on drunk drivers, Illinois lawmakers are weighing a bill that would permanently revoke the driver's license of a person with four DUI convictions. Dubbed by supporters as ‘the driver's license death penalty,' the bill was passed unanimously by the state's House of Representatives last week and is now in the Senate's hands. Members are hashing out opponents' concerns that penalties alone won't stop habitual DUI offenders: They also need treatment," (Gatland 18). Why a multi-level approach to the problem is needed on a local, state and national level is because statistics show that, despite harsher laws alone, many still die needlessly as the result of drunk driving accidents. Despite enormous efforts to promote social awareness and increase penaltie