The Ontario government has introduced legislation that will stiffen penalties for drunk driving. Among the new measures there will be a lifetime licence suspension for people convicted of impaired driving causing death.
The fact that there isn’t already an automatic lifetime licence suspension for people convicted of impaired driving causing death tells you all you need to know. We live in a society where someone can get drunk, kill someone, get convicted and drive again.
Why? You’d think that the whole “causing death” experience would snuff out any desire to drive again.
As a teenager in 1983, I smoked a joint with a taxi driver in Victoria, B.C., which turned out to be laced with PCP. I had a wild trip and was picked up by local law enforcement. I never smoked up again. That was bad, and that was enough.
The upcoming legislation would prevent someone like Marco Muzzo from driving again if the same deadly crash happens after it becomes law.
In 2015, Muzzo crashed his Jeep Cherokee into a minivan, killing three children and their grandfather in Vaughan, Ont. The grandson of a billionaire developer, Marco Muzzo wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was born with the entire set in there. He was three times over the legal limit.
Muzzo had no previous convictions. In 2016, he was convicted of four counts of impaired driving causing death and two of impaired driving causing bodily harm and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a 12-year licence suspension. He got full parole in 2021. Once his suspension is finished, he can drive again, likely in a nice car.
“I know when talking to those victims … about people, someone who’s killed somebody being able to drive again, their opinion is that they shouldn’t ever be allowed to get behind the wheel of a car again,” Carolyn Swinson, a volunteer with Mothers Against Drunk Driving who lost her eldest son in an impaired driving crash in 1993, which came about 12 years after her father was killed by someone who had been drinking, said to The Canadian Press. She was talking about drunk driving victims in general. “So I know that all the victims … will be very, very supportive of these actions.”
But even with the current law, some convicted drunk drivers, even some who have been responsible for fatalities, drive before they are legally allowed and some drive drunk while suspended.
In October, for instance, Sandra Emran was arrested for the fourth time in 18 months for an impaired driving-related offence. Darya Selinevich, an Ontario woman who killed a cyclist while driving impaired in 2015, had her parole revoked in 2021 for being caught drunk driving again.
Of course, there is only one type of person who would want to drive again after killing someone while impaired behind the wheel and that’s the sort of person who kills someone while impaired behind the wheel.
While a lifetime ban is a welcome development and will hopefully decrease the number of people who drink and drive and the number of injuries and deaths as a result, it won’t completely stop the carnage of drunk driving.
The legislation’s other measures include installing ignition locks in the vehicles of those convicted of impaired driving by drugs or alcohol. That’s great but a convicted drunk driver can borrow a relative or friend’s car or steal one. It is a challenging crime to stop even though we all know drunk driving is deadly. Which once again leaves us stuck with the eternal “Why?”
Who knows?
If anybody does, they’re not saying.