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Show Experts disagree over impact of new drunk driving law While state safety and law enforcement officials are hailing the tough new drinking drink-ing driver law as instrumental instrumen-tal in reducing highway fatalities, two University of Utah professors are claiming claim-ing that the new law is inefficient, unfair and has not altered fatalities at all. Economics professors James Rock and Steve Reynolds Rey-nolds say that their studies show the added paperwork and red tape involved with the new law make law enforcement officials hesitant hesi-tant to make drunk driving arrests. In the long run, they maintain, this factor will lead to reduced deterrence for drunk driving. "We were taken aback when the state public safety officials announced the new law was really working," Rock said. He said that state officials are claiming the law was having a great effect on drunk driving because DUI arrests are down. Further, Rock said, state officials who are arguing that fatalities due to DUI are down are not analyzing the data correctly. There is no evidence to suggest that drunk-driving related fatalities fatali-ties are down, he said. Many more statistics over a long period of time must be analyzed before any correlations correla-tions can be made concerning concern-ing the effect of the new law on highway fatalities, he argued. Rock and Reynolds also criticize the law for treating first offenders almost as harshly as repeat offenders. The law puts a great financial burden on the average citizen arrested for drunk driving, Rock said. The added paperwork and administrative requirements require-ments that come with the new law make it more expensive for taxpayers as well, he said. The additional funds provided pro-vided for drunk driving enforcement by the legislature legisla-ture will not cover the cost incurred by that enforcement enforce-ment and the administrative expenditures that come with it, Rock said. As the deterrent deter-rent effect on drunk driving fades with the inefficiencies of the new law, Rock said taxpayers will be left with an overly expensive system. "The malady won't go away with this prescription." prescrip-tion." he said. Nevertheless, local officials say the new law is better. Park City Police Chief Frank Bell said the new system combines a number of old procedures. The new law provides a more efficient effici-ent system as well as a more accurate one, he said. Fifth Circuit Court Judge Larry Keller, who helped to draft the new law, also disagrees with Rock and Reynolds. He said that for the first time in Utah, first offenders are treated less severely for drunk driving than repeat offenders. According to Keller, under the new law first offenders will have their licenses revoked for a period of 90 days while repeat offenders can have licenses suspended for up to one year. The mandatory jail sentences sen-tences accompanying DUI convictions are also harsher on the repeat offender, Keller said. He claimed that the new DUI law doesn't require the court to do any more paperwork than it had in the past. Bell said DUIs have always al-ways involved more paperwork paper-work than most other arrests. ar-rests. But he argued if the new DUI forms are properly filled out by the arresting offices, cases can be more efficiently tried because the forms include the officers' official statement as well as the drivers' condition and other pertinent information. Bell said that there probably prob-ably weren't as many DUI arrests this year as there were a year ago. But he said he believes that is due to deterrence and other factors rather than officers hesitating hesitat-ing to make arrests. "I think people are really becoming aware of the drunk driving problem," he said. "It is something that seems to be on peoples' minds." |
