A majority of commuters in Wisconsin like to drink, and a large number of those commuters who drink are sometimes going to drive drunk. Wisconsin has the highest drunk driving rate in the USA. More than 26 percent of adults in Wisconsin have admitted driving drunk. No amount of law enforcement will put a stop to drunk driving unless we have a good mass transit system. People with suspended or revoked licenses need a way to get around. People who are drunk need a way to get home. There won't always be a designated driver available. That is one more reason why Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's plan, to give everyone a nice car, isn't going to eliminate the need for a transit system.
If it was only one percent of the population, maybe the other ninety-nine percent could say, they should have been more careful, too bad. They can look out for themselves. Lock them up if they drive on a suspended license. But 26 percent is enough to swing elections. No wonder it takes five drunk driving convictions to amount to a felony offense in Wisconsin. There were more than 42,000 drunk driving convictions in Wisconsin last year – that is four times John Kerry's margin of victory in the state in the 2004 presidential elections.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been running a moving series of articles on drunk driving. Basically, each one highlights a recent accident that ripped a huge hole in a family, because some jerk got roaring drunk and drove off down the road, slamming at high speed into the other family's car, killing a person or three. Usually the homicidal drunk had several prior convictions, and often had their license suspended or revoked multiple times. These articles give the reader an urgent sense that anyone driving on a revoked or suspended license should be locked up for ten or twenty years. It would be a good preventive measure. Alcohol-related crashes killed 234 people in Wisconsin and injured more than 4,000 in 2008.
But law enforcement and stiff penalties are not enough. There must be alternative ways to get to work, or even to get home from a bar, not to mention doing grocery shopping. People who have to wait 45 minutes on a cold windy corner for a bus are going to be awfully tempted to drive. If the bus route a commuter depended on has been cancelled, they are definitely going to drive, suspension or no, drunk or not. Transit needs to be available, convenient, frequent, and cover everywhere a person reasonably needs to go. If buses and trains don't offer that, people are going to drive, and only some of them are going to be arrested, tried, convicted, and locked up.
A driver's license is, technically, a privilege, but if driving your own car is the only way to get around, then it becomes a necessity. Therefore people will consider it a right. Many drunk drivers are perfectly nice people, good neighbors, hard workers, except that they really shouldn't be driving. When someone with no other record goes to prison for half their life over a negligent homicide, it breaks their family's heart, just like the deaths they caused broke another family's heart. A good way to save TWO families from this kind of heartbreak is to provide other ways to travel than driving your own car.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) reports that while motor vehicle trips peak between 3:00 pm and 6:00 pm, drunk driving fatalities are at their highest 6:00 pm to 3:00 am. So it's a no-brainer: public safety requires convenient transit routes continuing to run well past midnight. Perhaps smaller vehicles should be used after 8:00 pm or so. That would allow time for maintenance on the larger vehicles, another important safety factor. It would reduce fuel use, and wear and tear, when there are fewer passengers using the system. But the transit option must be available. If there is no transit, people are going to drive, in larger numbers than police can arrest. Police can arrest some, but the arrests should provide incentive to many more to play it safe, and take the bus. If there is no bus, that is not an option.
So, it makes our streets a little less safe that their will be fewer buses on Route 33 (Vliet Street) in 2010, the Howard Avenue branch of the 14 – Forest Home bus won't get any buses at all anymore, and Route 35 will no longer run out to Southridge Mall on week-days. Getting to a busy, concentrated location like Southridge Mall ought to be a priority for any mass transit system. It's nice that Miller-Coors pays for free bus service on New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, drivers are drinking Miller and Coors all year round, not just on designated holidays. It is past time to dig the bill authorizing dedicated mass transit funding out of the legislative dead zone, pass a bill, and hold Governor Jim Doyle's feet to the fire until he signs it. Oh, and Scott Walker needs to get his head out of the sand. Everyone can't drive. Maybe a quarter of the people now driving should not be. Get our transit system up and running. It could save 234 lives.
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