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A law to live by
One year after garnering national attention for saddling state drivers with much-maligned “abusive driving” fees, Virginia is getting decidedly less ink for its latest round of new laws.
For the most part, that's a good thing.
While none of the 100-plus items that went on the books Tuesday is particularly controversial, at least one should have an immediate impact on young drivers across the state.
Going forward, teenagers convicted in Virginia of driving after consuming virtually any amount of alcohol will lose their driver's licenses for a year and be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. That doubles the current driver's license suspension period and should go a long way toward strengthening our reputation as a state that has little tolerance for those who drink and drive.
Up until this week, teens convicted of driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.02 (the equivalent of consuming just one drink in one hour) were penalized with a six-month driver's license suspension and fined "not more than $500."
To their credit, Virginia legislators realized six months without a license wasn't tough enough to alter behavior that's been trending the wrong way for more than a decade.
According to a recent state-sponsored survey on substance abuse, 76 percent of Virginia's high school seniors and 64 percent of 10th-graders reported using alcohol. Even more troubling is that nearly one in three seniors reported consuming five or more drinks in a row within the report period's past two weeks.
If those numbers aren't cause for alarm, this one should be. According to data compiled by the Virginia Department of Transportation, alcohol-related traffic fatalities involving Virginia teens went up a staggering 43 percent in 2006 – nearly tripling the rate of increase in such fatalities among all age drivers in Virginia.
We aren't naïve enough to believe doubling license suspension periods and fines are going to keep every young driver in the state from making a bad decision, but there's little doubt 16- and 17-year-olds in this state know about these new laws. It's also safe to assume most will be thinking about it the next time booze is introduced at a late-night party.
At the end of the day, laws are introduced to save lives and aid our quality of life. This one succeeds on both counts.
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