California Crash Shows Why License Suspensions Don’t Work

There’s a reason why a driver’s license suspension won’t work for all drunk drivers. When you suspend someone’s license, you are relying on that person to abide by that suspension. The problem with some convicted drunk drivers? They don’t take that suspension seriously, and they just continue to drink and drive despite the restriction on their license.

But there’s a reason why drunk drivers have their driver’s license suspended, and that’s because if they drink and drive once, they’re more likely to drink and drive over and over again. When they do that, the inevitable happens: a drunk driving crash, and that’s when innocent people die.

One recent crash in California is the perfect example of this. A mother was bending over beside her parked car to remove her daughter from the back seat. A drunk driver struck six parked cars nearby and crashed into the mother and daughter, throwing them over 30 feet down the road. The mother was killed instantly, and the daughter is in critical condition in the hospital.

This drunk driver shouldn’t have been driving at all. He had already pleaded no contest to a DUI conviction at the end of August, and his driver’s license was suspended before that because he failed to appear in court.

It’s clear from a crash like this one that a driver’s license suspension doesn’t work, and that’s because there’s nothing preventing that driver from putting the keys in the ignition and starting the car. What will stop these drunk drivers in California? California’s new ignition interlock law, requiring all offenders in all counties to install an interlock device in any vehicle they drive, will be in place in 2019.

The new law can’t turn back the clock and change the outcome of this crash, but it can save the lives of thousands of others who could be killed because a drunk driver makes the choice to ignore a driver’s license suspension. These lifesaving devices are the only way of truly preventing someone who is intoxicated from starting the car, so the new law can’t come soon enough.