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Wobbly pop
When I was five years old, a “kindergarten baby,” I was hit by a car driven by a drunk driver. The incident occurred just a couple of blocks from our home. In those days, we didn’t have the luxury of sidewalks and I was walking on the shoulder of the road. Even at the tender age of five, I knew the jingle about walking single file and facing traffic. Even though I was facing traffic, the driver managed to weave across the road and hit me from behind. Just a regular day in the suburbs. Apparently, the driver had enjoyed a couple of afternoon cocktails with her friends and was on her way home to cook dinner for the family.
I wasn’t seriously injured. My parents didn’t press charges because she was our neighbour. On top of that, our school lost its Elmer the Safety Elephant flag because I was involved in a motor vehicle accident. Never mind who was at fault. From that day forward, I had a really bad taste for people who choose to drink and drive. I know what it feels like to be hit by a 2,000- pound vehicle.
Fast forward to the fall of 2015 when 29- year-old Marco Muzzo chose to have far too much to drink—twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system. Muzzo then chose to get into his car and drive drunk. He was drunk enough to believe he was good to go. That happens to some people who have too much to drink. They become invincible. But on the night he made that choice, he killed three children and their grandfather. The other two passengers in the victims’ vehicle, the grandmother and the great-grandmother, were seriously injured. The whole family paid the price of Marco Muzzo’s incredibly selfish, piss-and-bravado decision.
Lots of folks refer to an incident of this type as “a mistake.” No mistake about it, Muzzo was way beyond drunk. Nobody forced him to drink too much. Ironically, because Marco Muzzo was drunk while driving his car when he killed those people, he was treated differently in the courtroom. He wasn’t accused of murder; he was a drunk driver whose choices caused deaths.
We have a two-tiered system of justice in the case of impaired drivers who kill, and people who take lives any other way. At most, Muzzo will spend a few years in prison and be back on the streets in no time at all.
Statistics Canada revealed the most recent data on impaired driving, indicating less than 10 per cent of the approximately 50,000 people charged with impaired driving were sentenced to jail terms. Fewer than 10 per cent. When a drunk driver causes death or—in Muzzo’s case—several deaths, judges often interpret the Criminal Code in favour of the accused. Drunk driving causing death averages about two and a half years in jail time. A sentence for homicide is, generally, six to twelve years. What the H-E-double-fisted doubles is that all about?!
Is there justice for the family in this, or any similar case? Never. Those family members will never come back. There isn’t a way to erase the horror of losing a family member to a drunk driver.
To get a conviction in every case of drunk driving, the law officers must be able to prove a blood alcohol level above 0.08 but they are not allowed to demand a breathalyzer test unless they have reasonable grounds. Yup, the officer can lean into your car window and give a sniff for that almost imperceptible scent of booze, but can’t ask you to walk the line unless they’ve got a damn good reason to do so. And breath testing has to be done before the suspect leaves the crime scene.
Often, impaired drivers escape charges by fleeing the scene or have been injured and are taken away in an ambulance. Richard Suter of Edmonton admitted he drank two vodkas and part of a beer in the hours before climbing into his car, losing control, then hitting and killing a toddler on a sidewalk. Suter refused to give a breath test at the scene of the accident. He was sentenced to a four-month jail term when the judge ruled Suter had not been impaired. He’s back on the road.
The time has come to stop treating drunk driving as a mere traffic violation. We have to stop making drunk driving sound like a boo boo, or a lack of good judgement or “something that just happens.” We have to pressure our lawmakers to stop making excuses for alcohol as a cause of road deaths. A three-day, seven-day and thirty-day roadside licence suspension with an administrative penalty is a joke. I don’t think the Neville-Lake family is laughing.
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