Meaningless penalty must be addressed
Maybe 9-year-old Timmy David would be alive today if the penalty for driving with a suspended license amounted to more than a longer time out. But that’s all it is. Get caught driving with a suspended license, the state keeps it a little longer. We’ll never know for sure but there’s at a least a chance that alleged hit-and-run driver Victoria Cramer would not have been behind the wheel of a car last week had she faced a jail term or some other meaningful penalty for knowingly breaking the law. And so there’s a chance, too, that Timmy might still be alive.
But what’s done is done and all we can hope is that Timmy’s death and his family’s anguish will not be in vain. Which is why we turn to our state lawmakers today with this appeal: Do something! Do it now! Do it before another dangerous driver accepts the minimal risk of paying a meaningless price for brazenly breaking a law.
And make no mistake, there are loads of people doing just that. Nearly 57,000 Pennsylvanians were convicted last year of driving without a license – and that’s just the ones who got caught.
So they lose their license for another year. So what?
We don’t mean to be flip but isn’t that the mindset of those who drive without a license? It’s an attitude we have to change. Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons offers a way to do that. Lawmakers should give it some thought.
“I think if a person gets pulled over and they don’t have a license, they should go right to jail,” she said. “I don’t know if legislators see it that way.”
Well, let’s consider the question asked. We’d like to hear from our lawmakers on the issue, in particular, state Sen. Tommy Tomlinson. The senator took great interest in a related issue – drunken drivers caught with a suspended license. Tomlinson succeeded in toughening the law for that offense, by getting a bill passed that added jail time and increased fines.
The measure was inspired by Mark Shreck, who at age 16 was struck and killed by a repeat drunken driver with a suspended license. We encourage the senator to show similar leadership on this issue. And we implore our other lawmakers – House and Senate members alike – to take lead roles as well.
Something has to be done because the existing penalties are worthless. Says Gibbons of the infraction, “We see it all the time … The worst ones are the guys who say they’re suspended for so many years … it doesn’t matter if they get caught and get suspended for a longer time.”
And that’s the key – making it matter that the law’s been broken.