Drunk Driving, Part 1

On this episode of Tony Talks Charles County Crime, State's Attorney Tony Covington discusses the deadly choice that kills over 10,000 people in America per year: drunk driving.

In part one of a two-episode discussion, State's Attorney Covington breaks down the problem of drunk driving and its causes, while also sharing a gripping true-life narrative of how drunk driving affected one family forever.

01:38 - Victim Impact Account
06:09 - Problem by the Numbers
08:55 - The Cause: Public Attitude
09:57 - Alcohol is NOT the Cause of Drunk Driving
14:06 - Good Guy or Criminal?
17:59 - Drunk Driving and the Criminal Justice System
27:23 - Enforcement of the Laws
28:47 - Relying on Drunk Drivers
34:04 - Dispelling Myths
35:41 - Conclusion

Please stay tuned for Part 2 of Tony Talks Charles County Crime: Drunk Driving.


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Transcript

Tony Covington: 0:15

Welcome, Tony Covington, your State's Attorney here. If you heard my first podcast, you know that I try to answer a couple of questions from the public at the end of each episode. Well, this episode and the next are actually going to be me answering two questions that have been posed to me many times before. Many people want to know why we have so many drunk drivers out there and what we can do to stop it. Since neither of those questions can be answered in a couple of minutes. I decided to devote an entire episode to each question. This episode, part one, will be about the problem with drunk driving and its causes. It sounds straightforward, but I think you'll be surprised at some of the things I reveal and after outlining the problem in part one, part two, we'll deal with the solutions to what really is an epidemic. And by the way, if you think this epidemic won't impact you, the odds say you're mistaken. Two out of three people will be impacted by a drunk driving crash in their lifetime, so unfortunately you probably will be forced to deal with the aftermath of a drunk driving collision at some point in your life, so please keep listening. Since the holiday season is upon us, which means that more than the usual number of drunk drivers are going to be out there on our roadways. I figured now would be a good time to talk about drunk driving and the mayhem that results from it, but before I get into the causes and solutions to this huge problem, let me give you a true life account of the impact drunk driving has on families and our communities. Seven year old boy is sitting at home along with his grandmother, mother, four brothers and sisters. He and the other kids are subdued because they can feel their mother's anxiety over the fact that her husband, the kid's father, is very, very late coming home. Even more worrisome to them is that he's unreachable and no one knows where he is. The boy can't wait for his father, his everyday real life hero, to come strolling through the door, grab him and his two brothers and start the rough housing that occurs every night Dad comes home. Despite this anticipation of that moment, he like everyone else in the house was nervous. All of them jump when they hear the unexpected shrill sound of the phone ring. The boy watches as his mother picks up the phone. After a few moments of talking with whoever's on the other end of the line, the boy sees his mother, seemingly in slow motion, turn towards him and his siblings with the look of pure terror on her face. It's a look that will haunt the boy for the rest of his life, but the look on her face can't compare to the sound that explodes from her mouth. A scream, a primal scream that sounds as if someone has plunged their hand into her chest and ripped out her very soul. It is a sound made. When someone realizes that everything they have worked for, everything they have dreamed of their entire life, that which they love the most is in one fell swoop destroyed right before their very eyes. Throughout the boy's life that unforgettable sound is with him when he wakes up in a cold sweat, because of the all too often nightmares about the awful night and the days that followed his father's death. Now seven years old, the boy was too young to understand what daddy is dead truly meant. For years, he woke up every morning thinking his father would be at the breakfast table, reading the paper, drinking his coffee. Every time the front door opened, he believed dad was going to come strutting into house, surprising everyone just like he did when he had returned from Vietnam. But once the boy got old enough and dad never again showed up at the breakfast table and never again walked through their front door, he finally understood that death truly meant never again. Yet, even understanding that he would never see his father again, throughout his entire life this boy, turned teenager, turned young man, turned middle-aged man, still dreams of seeing his father walk into his house. And in his dream he watches as his father gets to see the grandchildren he never knew and meet the daughter-in-law he never had a chance to meet. And he watched as his father, with tears running down his face, marvels at everything, that his middle child has achieved over a lifetime. In this dream the son asks his father why he's crying. The father says, son, I'm crying for two reasons, partly because I'm so proud of the man you have become and all that you have done in your life. Mostly I'm crying because I wasn't able to be there with you. And make no mistake, the boy wasn't the only one devastated by this tragedy. His entire family would struggle after his dad was killed, the father's senseless, totally preventable death impacted every member of the family for all their days. They found that the loss of his father became bearable, not because the wound of a violent senseless death ever healed. The wound never healed. No, the lost become bearable only because there was no alternative. Life went on and they had no choice but to keep moving forward. Keep living life. Throughout their lives, however, no matter how high they rose, no how great a day it may be, their days are always a little less bright because that little boy's father was taken away and just couldn't be there for them. And all this because some drunk driver crossed the double yellow line on an Alabama road and at 70 miles an hour slammed head on into his father's Volvo. In an instant, the boy's father was taken from this earth, from his mother, from his wife, from his children, never to be seen or heard again. Never again. Trust me, I know this is not a pleasant subject, especially during this cheer-filled holiday season, but it is incredibly important. Why? Well, to answer that let me give you some idea of the scope of the problem. In America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, every single year, more than 10,000 people are killed by drunk drivers. Drunk driving deaths account for fully a third of all traffic fatalities in the country. That's one out of three traffic fatalities. Think about that. More than 10,000 living, breathing souls gone forever. Ten thousand deaths a year means that every single hour of every single day at least one person in America is killed by a drunk driver. It means every single hour, every single day at least one family like that seven-year-old boy's family you just heard about is devastated and scarred for life by a drunk driver. Think on this for a second, how many people are killed while you're watching a movie or during your commute to and from work each day? One, two, three, four? You know when you think of it that way, it's kind of unbelievable, isn't it? And those numbers relate just to the deaths from drunk driving. Almost 300,000 people a year are injured in drunk driving crashes. Every two minutes, yeah, I said two- as in uno, dos, two- every two minutes someone is injured in a drunk driving crash. So every hour at least 30 people potentially have their lives forever changed. They may be alive, but maimed or crippled, and I'm not even going to get into the mental and emotional toll drunk driving crashes take on people. It's basically impossible to quantify. They have, however, been able to quantify the financial costs of drunk driving. The total is 132 billion. That's right with a b, billion dollars a year. That's more than three times Maryland's entire state budget. Now, those are national statistics, so you asked me about closer to home. Well, here in the great state of Maryland, we do our share to contribute to the distressing death toll. In Maryland, over the past 10 years, someone has been killed by a drunk driver about every other day. That's right. Family doesn't grieve today in Maryland, unfortunately you can safely bet that one will be grieving tomorrow. All this death and mayhem simply because someone who had too much to drink didn't have the common decency to not get behind the wheel and drive a 4,000 pound weapon that we normally call a car. And to me, the worst of it all is that this horror that we deal with basically every single minute of every day is preventable. And since it is preventable, given this kind of yearly casualty that we have, you would think that collectively, we'd be doing everything in our power to stop drunk driving and save lives. Well, sadly, I'm here to tell you that we aren't and because we aren't, I need to talk to you about how we got to this awful place where so many lives are needlessly lost. And actually it's not hard to figure out how we got here. First, we as a society just don't care enough about the problem. Secondly, although we certainly have the means to eliminate drunk driving, we simply don't do enough to fix the problem. I know these are pretty generalized reasons but bear with me and I'll give you the details that lead directly to my conclusions here. Let's start with the fact that we don't care enough about this problem. It is clear as day to me that as a society we don't consider or treat drunk driving as a serious crime that it really is. Sure, we go through the motions of combating the menace and don't get me wrong, including the police and prosecutors are certainly many dedicated, motivated, good people and organizations out there fighting the good fight. MADD stands for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That's just one of the well known examples, but overall, as a society, our behavior and how we allocate society's resources reveals that we just don't care enough. This is especially true of drunk driving that leads to death. There are several interlocking reasons that I think demonstrate that this is true. Let me get into them. First, let's talk about how we view the root cause of drunk driving. We tend to see drunk drivers as salt of the earth people that just made a mistake. Folks say, well, they were just doing what so many of us do, enjoying some alcohol and they made the mistake of letting alcohol get the best of them. A mistake that any of us could make, they say. Our society, and very importantly, our courts tend to think and act like alcohol itself is the problem. What I mean by that, well let me tell you what typically happens in court when someone is charged with drunk driving and I think you'll get where I'm coming from. When someone gets charged with drunk driving, the first thing that an attorney will do is to have their client go get an evaluation to see if they have an alcohol problem and if necessary, get treatment. Believe it or not, there is a whole industry set up for this. Anyway. Then at the sentencing of the guilty drunk driver, the first thing out of the attorney's mouth is, Judge, my client has been evaluated and he doesn't have an alcohol problem. He's learned his lesson. Please don't do anything to him, and the judge says, well, I'm glad you don't have an alcohol problem, sir. Go forth from this courtroom and sin no more. Now, even if the drunk driver does have an alcohol problem, the judge will order him to do some Alcoholics Anonymous classes or some other treatment plan or the court just may accept the treatment the client's attorney already had them get before he then says, go forth from this courtroom and sin no more. Now that scenario plays out thousands of times a week in our nation's courtrooms. The attorney's focus and the courts focus are on whether the drunk driver has an alcohol problem, so the court just wants the defendant to get help for that issue and the theory goes all will be fine. Unfortunately, that's just flat out wrong. Alcohol doesn't cause drunk driving. Sure, the crime of driving under the influence of alcohol requires the alcohol. Yeah. You can't have one without the other. I get that. Still, I say again, alcohol does not cause the crime. Hear me out for a minute further so I can drive my point home. No pun intended there. Tell me if you have ever heard a true life version of the following scenario. Drunk driver is in court for sentencing. He tells the court that the reason he was driving drunk that night was because he and his buddies were at the bar watching the game. He had some beers during the game. When their team won, they did some shots to celebrate. Now as he was drinking these beers, he tells the Judge he felt this strange compulsion to go drive his car and with each successive shot that he gulped down the compulsion to drive just got stronger, stronger and stronger. Finally, he gave in and just left his boys at the bar and got in his car and just started driving. Then he wrecked the car and was arrested. Judge, he said, I just couldn't help myself. Kinda like Jamie Foxx saying, you know, blame it on the alcohol. Am I right? You never heard anyone say that, have you? Neither have I. And that's because it doesn't happen. If alcohol caused drunk driving, I would have heard that ridiculous excuse thousands of times over my career, but I've never heard it because alcohol ain't the cause of drunk driving. It's clearly part of the crime, but not itself the cause. And as a prosecutor, I've tried to make judges understand that the alcohol or an alcohol problem isn't the culprit. Let me tell you, I can't count how many times I told judges at sentencing that I could not care less how much Johnny boy loves alcohol. He can drink himself silly all day and night as far as I'm concerned. He's grown, can do what he wants in that regard. I couldn't stop him if I wanted to. As a prosecutor, what I care about is that he doesn't get behind the wheel of a car after drinking and I told those judges to give a sentence that will make Johnny think two, three, four times before he drives drunk again. I focused on the decision to drive, not the drinking. And I do so because when you boil it down, it is a selfish, reckless, depraved heart decision to get behind the wheel after drinking that truly causes drunk driving and all the carnage that comes with it. It is not the alcohol itself. Now, because we erroneously focus on the alcohol as opposed to the decision to drive, we see drunk drivers as merely a good guy that made a mistake. We tend to believe that it's not his fault. He's not responsible for his conduct, so we should not treat him too harshly. Contrary, we've used, say a shoplifter, as a criminal. She took someone else's property. She committed a crime. We ought to lock her thieving behind up. Well, truth be told, the drunk driver committed a crime too. A real honest to God crime. In fact, a real dangerous crime. Remember, drunk drivers kill somebody every hour of every day. Do shoplifters? Uh, no. No, they don't. Now, despite the very routine deadly consequences of drunk driving, we give drunk drivers all kinds of excuses to excuse their criminal behavior. He's a good guy. He just made a poor decision. He was depressed because he just got fired or he was celebrating. He just got a promotion or he just got engaged or he got a baby. He bought a new lawn mower. Anything. We say anything to give the drunk driver a break and to not call him a criminal or treat him like other criminals. Shoot. We do it so much that drunk drivers themselves, even those that kill people don't accept or recognize that their conduct is criminal. Here's a true story example of that: We had a defendant that was driving drunk and she failed to yield the right of way to a motorcyclist. The cyclist was killed. She was convicted, sentenced, served her sentence, and had been placed on probation. She violated the conditions of her probation, which meant that she was subject to whatever part of her sentence that had been suspended. Now, as we were going through the process of asking the judge to violate her probation and reincarcerate her, she complained bitterly that we, the prosecutors and judge, were treating her like quote, a criminal, unquote. Yeah. Those are her words. And they came out of her mouth. She was very upset that we had the nerve to hold her accountable like we would any other criminal and just so you know, we did hold her accountable and she did go back to jail, but that's not my point. My point is that she and so many like her can't wrap their mind around why they're being treated like a criminal and they can't because collectively our society doesn't really view them as criminals either. So why should they see themselves as anything other than a good guy or gal that made a simple innocent mistake that had grave consequences? Well, I hate to break the news to drunk drivers and everyone else, but the somber truth is that when a drunk driver decides to get behind the wheel of that car and start the engine, he has the exact same mentality that every other criminal has when they commit their crimes. At that moment, they don't care about anybody else's life or well-being. All they want is what they want in that moment. The laws can be damned, they are going to do whatever they dag on please, and on top of that, like every criminal defendant I've ever dealt with, they firmly believe, I mean firmly believe they aren't going to get caught. That's the mindset of every drunk driver, including the drunk driver that killed that seven year old boy's father, and it's the same mindset of every murderer, rapist, robber, burglar, child molester, thief when they commit their crimes. The mindsets are exactly the same. So this drunk driving isn't a real crime attitude, it manifests itself in the decision-making process of drunk drivers when they choose between driving or giving up their keys. Can't you just hear them saying to themselves, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and drive home. It's not like I'm committing a real crime or anything. On a macro level, the attitude that DUIs aren't a big deal also manifests itself and how we as a society cope with it, how serious we take it. Why would we take anything seriously that we don't believe is a real crime or problem? We wouldn't and we don't. And that's a problem. And guess what? Even our criminal justice system, the very system we look to for control of this problem reflects this attitude and even reinforces the thought that drunk driving isn't really a serious crime. Before I tackle this topic, let me say right off the bat that I believe the criminal justice system reflects how we, the people, feel about crime. So to deal with this, I'm not trying to say that the system is out of touch with what our society wants. I'm not bashing police or judges or anybody. Quite frankly, in my view, most citizens are right in step with how the system deals with drunk drivers, which is part of my point as being part of the problem. Now, our courts signals to the public that drunk driving isn't a big deal by failing to impose sentences that would effectively deter changed behavior of drunk drivers. I know that we hear and see in the media strident language; it makes us believe drunk drivers really suffer when they get caught and go to court. Well, I wish that was the case, but I gotta be honest, it's not. At the risk of being accused of encouraging somebody to go and drive drunk, I'm going to keep it real and tell you what actually happens with drunk drivers in court. Obviously all judges are different. So what I'm about to lay out for you is as general as general can get. Nevertheless, it's accurate and I think you'll conclude that impactful consequences for drunk drivers are sorely missing in Maryland courts. The penalties, not the laws on the books, but the real penalties. The courts impose day in and day out. Penalties for drunk driving are too low and weak to make a real difference. Now at this point, I'm only talking about your average run of the mill DUI. No death or serious injury involved. I'll get to the ongoing travesty of how courts deal with the cases where a drunk driver actually killed someone in a bit. Now the statutory maximum sentence for a run of the mill driving under the influence case is one year in jail. Despite that maximum penalty, it's been my experience that in just about every courtroom in Maryland, a first time DUI offender isn't going to serve a day in jail. More than that, when it's all said and done, that first time offender won't even have a conviction for the DUI on his record. He will almost always receive what is called probation before judgment, PBJ for short. A PBJ is a mechanism in Maryland that allows somebody to be sentenced for a crime and that's any crime, not just DUIs, but not having an actual conviction recorded on their criminal or traffic record. Now in the MVA drunk driving world that's very valuable to a defendant because they don't get the points on their record that would automatically suspend their license. And to be fair, some courts require the defendant to earn that PBJ. The judge will give somebody the option of going to jail for a couple of days or paying a fine or doing community service in exchange for the PBJ, but in my opinion, there's absolutely no behavior changing sentencing of first time offenders in Maryland. A couple of days in jail ain't changing anybody's behavior and since two thirds of all drunk driving arrests are first time offenders, most convicted drunk drivers merely get the proverbial slap on the wrist. But since we don't see drunk driving as a real crime or a serious crime, what else would we expect from the courts? And let me throw a stat out there, and this is kind of random, but it blew my mind the first time I heard it. According to the self reporting surveys and studies that were done, researchers have concluded that the average drunk driver, check this out, the average drunk driver will drive drunk 80 times before they are caught and arrested for that first DUI. 80 times. Essentially that means that the average drunk drivers actually many times over multiple repeat offender when he first stands before the judge, they just don't have the record to prove it. I thought I'd share that with you. Speaking of repeat offenders, most of us would think that since the first timer got his break, I mean no jail and a PBJ is quite a break, right? If that first timer comes back again with a new DUI, the judge will give him a really good dose of that maximum one year sentence. Makes sense, right? Well, that ain't reality, my friends. While a third of drunk driving arrests are repeat offenders, significant jail sentences still are not imposed. Judges vary significantly on repeat offenders, but there would have to be some unusual conduct or circumstance, like maybe an accident for most judges to impose more than say 14 days for a second offense. And I've seen many times where a second offender won't get any jail time at all. For third time offenders, we would hope that judges finally get the hint that the defendant is a scofflaw and somebody who just won't stop putting everyone in danger. But even then, many judges won't give more than a 30 day sentence for a third-timer. Some will give more than 30, but again, only if there is some really unusual fact in the case. But think about this: Thirty days is only one twelfth of the maximum sentence the court could impose for a first timer. I guess your question could be, how many times does someone need to get caught driving under the influence before the Court will give him the maximum sentence? In answering that question, I wish I could tell you that at x number of convictions for DUIs, it's a certainty or even a likelihood that a defendant will get a year in jail. Sorry, again. I can't tell you that lie. I've seen cases where the defendant is on his seventh or eighth conviction and he still didn't get a year. In one case, I'm thinking of particular. The man got six months. That's it. It was ridiculous. Oh, you know, I almost forgot and actually this makes the sentencing that's going on out there even worse. Repeat offenders are looking at more than one year maximum. A second-timer actually faces a two year maximum sentence and a third timer faces a three year maximum sentence. But shoot, we can't even get judges to give five or six-timers a whole year max that a first-timer is subject to. So those penalties in practice have very little application. Unfortunately, the legislature wasted it's time enacting the repeat offender penalties. Even if someone does go to jail, almost every judge will grant him work release. Some, let them do their time on weekends too. You know, anything to not disrupt the life of a drunk driver, because remember the attitude, drunk driving isn't really all that bad, so we shouldn't inconvenience the poor drunk driving guy or his family. Let me move on before I get upset here to motor vehicle manslaughter, those drunk drivers that actually kill people. You say to me, Tony, surely things get better for victims and our communities in these situations. I mean, after all, somebody's dead. Please tell me that the courts get this right. My answer to you is this, not only do we not get it right, but the situation, believe it or not, is even worse than DUIs without deaths. Here's why: Let's start with the penalties again. You know, at least in a normal nonfatal DUI, the penalty available to the judge, by that I mean the statutory maximum of one year, it's reasonable. I hope my sarcasm didn't make you think that I'm advocating that first timers should be going to jail for more than a year in the absence of a death or a life-threatening injury. I'm not. I think a year gives a judge plenty of leeway to fashion and impactful sentence for a DUI when nobody is hurt. They don't do so, but they have the power to. So a maximum of a year is reasonable in those cases, and I have no problem with the two and three year max sentences for repeat offenders. Again, when no one is seriously hurt. On the other hand, I've got a big problem with a totally unreasonable maximum sentence for motor vehicle manslaughter. You see in Maryland the maximum penalty for killing someone in a drunk driving crash is 10 years. That's it. Ten years. By way of comparison, the maximum sentence for first or second degree murder is life, forty years, respectfully. Now, I'm not going to argue that the sentence for manslaughter should be as high as that, but you know what? I think all would agree that the penalty for killing someone, for taking them off the face of the earth forever, should be more than what you can get for theft. That's right. The penalty for felony theft can be 20 years. What about burglary? Twenty years. Or drug dealing? 20 years. Misdemeanor assault, for goodness sake, it's 10 years. Now wait a second. Are you telling me I can get the same amount of time for a simple non-aggravated assault as I can for killing someone? Yeah. That's how incomprehensibly low the maximum sentence for motor vehicle manslaughter is. Ten years is an insult to victims' families and screams out that we don't care about drunk driving even if you kill somebody. Now, to make matters worse, judges rarely even impose the full 10 year sentence anyway. In my experience, most sentences are five years or less, which means it is a rarity to see a man slaughterer spend more than say, 18 months behind bars once you factor in parole. Eighteen months for killing someone. But let's be real, even if the judge did give a maximum sentence, are you trying to tell me a toddler, a young child, a teenager, a college student, mom, dad, that anyone's life is only worth 10 years? Well, not to me, and that's the real point. Even the legislature, your representatives that decide what the maximum penalties are for all crimes and that you have influence with, by the way, even the legislature, doesn't take DUIs, at least the deadly ones, serious enough either. Another huge signal that we don't care or do enough would be the lack of resources we allocate to catch drunk drivers. Check this out: in a 2014 extensive study, American drivers voluntarily self-reported that they drove after having too much to drink approximately a 111 million times that year. In that same year, just over 1 million people were arrested for drunk driving. So the 111 million self reported episodes of drunk driving that year, only one percent of the episodes ended in arrest. Only one percent. That's one out of 100 were caught. Now, at first blush, you may think that's bad policing. I don't think so. What it shows is a lack of resources to deal with an incredibly large and dangerous problem. You know, I'm fond of saying that governments put money and resources into those things that they feel are important. Only having enough resources to catch one percent of drunk drivers speaks volumes about how seriously we take drunk driving, doesn't it? In fact, nothing else really needs to be said on the resource issue to show that we don't truly care about saving lives by preventing drunk driving. Sure, we care when a life is extinguished, but we haven't cared enough to do enough by putting the resources in place to prevent drunk driving and that's shown by one percent of drunk drivers being caught. Now that leads me into my last topic before the big finish. Though last, I probably should have led off with this point because it's so obviously a huge reason for drunk driving being such a devastating and persistent plague on our nation. Here it is. We have so many drunk drivers because we rely on drunk people to decide if they're fit to drive. You know, one day somebody gave me this very good advice: Don't rely on someone who's drunk. I think it's great advice. Yet everyday we as a society rely on people who have been drinking, oftentimes far too much, to keep us safe on our roadways. I mean, is anyone really surprised that we have so many drunk drivers when we rely on the drunk people to determine if they are too drunk to drive? While our catchphrase against drunk driving is don't drink and drive, that's not the law. The law in Maryland and throughout this entire country is don't drink too much and drive, so the law itself says it's fine to drink and drive. Just don't overdo it. Which of course leaves us all at the mercy of drunk people determining for themselves whether they overdid it or not. Common sense tells me that letting people with alcohol, a substance that messes with people's brains, in their system assess their own sobriety is not a good idea. But I wasn't in the room when folks decided that we were going to allow people to drink some but not too much and have them decide whether they drank too much. If I had been in a room, I would have told them that this is crazy. I would have explained to them that science has proven over and over again that the advice I got many years ago about relying on a drunk is accurate. I would have referred them to more than 10,000 families that year that would have told them how stupid and deadly an idea that was. I would have given him over 10,000 examples of people that proclaim they were fit to drive, went ahead and drove their cars and promptly killed somebody. But I wasn't in that room. So the sake of discussion, let's just ignore how crazy an idea that is. Realistically, we must because that's what we allow to happen every day, and even if we thought it was a good idea, there's still a huge problem with self-assessment. People just can't accurately do it. You know research scientists have shown for years that there's a direct correlation between how much alcohol is in your system and the impact it will have on your ability to drive safely. They tested people's motor skills, reaction times, judgment, all those things you need to be able to drive after they had ingested different amounts of alcohol. And over the years, the scientific community came to agree that at a particular blood alcohol level, a person's ability to drive a car safely will be compromised. Compromised to the point that they would pose a substantial risk to themselves and anyone else on the roads. That's why we can confidently say that if you have a specific amount of alcohol in your system,.08 is the breathalyzer reading. You are impaired and here's what you really need to understand: whether a person subjectively feels that he is impaired or not. If he has a.08 in his system, he is impaired. Not only does the law say that, but far more importantly for this discussion, science has proven it time and again. Let me go over that again because for some reason people don't seem to grasp the critical finding by medical science this is. Science says that no matter how somebody subjectively feels, that is, even if they honestly don't think they're buzzed or slurring their words, staggering, wetting themselves, whatever, if they have a.08 in their system, they are impaired. In fact, all the faculties they need to safely drive a car are impaired whether they subjectively feel it or not. How they feel is irrelevant. So in that situation, how can we, why would we ever rely on that person to decide if he or she should drive? We shouldn't, but we do it all the time. It's plain lunacy to me. Now, for some reason, people think that they're overall judgment, their decision-making powers, are not impaired as easily as the other things you need to drive. You know, motor skills, coordination, all that. But it is. In fact, to prove it we need look no further than everyone's own life experiences. How many times have you or someone you know had to apologize for doing something stupid or hurtful to someone when drinking and they went home with somebody that they otherwise wouldn't have gone home with. They punch somebody in the face for basically no reason, something they'd never do if they were sober. Look, alcohol reduces inhibitions and screws up your judgment and that judgment, that decision making ability is what is needed to recognize that you've had too much to drink and to make the right decision not to drive a car. Not withstanding all of this, we leave it to people to self assess and regulate themselves. This is America after all, people are free to do what they want to do. So in the name of freedom, we let Johnny determine whether he's good to drive or not. How's Johnny or anybody going to know if they've had too much when they've been drinking and alcohol impairs that decision making ability. Now, before I close up here, let me tell you something related to assessing your sobriety. More specifically, trying to quickly sober up with some home remedy. Let me deal with the three that I've heard the most about. This'll be quick. First, contrary to popular belief, coffee does not sober you up. It may wake you up, get you wired, whatever, but it absolutely does not lessen the impairment to your motor skills, reaction time, decision making, judgment, all those things that you have to have to safely drive a car. Second, exercise doesn't help either. Third, take a cold shower doesn't help either. These home remedies to sober you up fast just don't work. And how many people have you known that have had too much to drink but went ahead and drove after they quote unquote sobered up by doing one of these home remedies? All they did was fool themselves and they may have felt more awake. I mean, it got their heart pumping and got cardio in for the day, or smelled a lot better, but guess what? They were still drunk and went on the road and put themselves and many others at risk, so please do us all a favor and pass the truth along that only time will sober you up. Time is what is needed. The body must be given time to metabolize the poison that alcohol is to the human body and flush it out. And that's that. We all know time waits for no one, but it also won't speed up for anyone either. And coffee, exercise and cold shower can't help time in this regard. Best thing to do is sleep it off at a friend's house or wherever. Finally, we arrive at the big finish. As I close, let me highlight something for you. One out of eight drunk drivers involved in a fatal crash have a prior DUI within three years of that crash. That means that by far most of the drunk drivers killing people have no prior DUIs. They are first timers with no real incentive not to drive drunk. They live in our communities. They knew how we think of and treat drunk drivers. Not bad, not bad at all. So they knew that the odds of them getting caught were slim and none, and even if they were caught, they knew nothing of real consequence would happen to them in court. With this terrible combination of woefully inadequate resourcing and the lack of behavior-changing sentencing in our courts, it's no wonder so many people take the risk and drive drunk. They believe, like every criminal, that the risk is worth whatever they think the reward is. All the death that comes from a society just not caring about those family members, those seven year old boys that are left behind to pick up the pieces. It's sad, but it also makes me angry, I'm not gonna lie about it. Angry because, as I've said, all of this is preventable and I went through all of these causes so we can talk about the solutions. Please listen to Part Two of the drunk driving episode where I will tell you how we really can prevent this scourge. Prevention won't happen overnight, but I'm sure we can get it done. Thank you for listening to the official podcast of the Charles County State's Attorney's Office. I'm your State's Attorney, Tony Covington. I'm signing off just like my father, Major George Vassar Covington would: Rangers Lead the Way. Covington Out.