You're Under Arrest (1982)

If you were to put up a roadblock any weekend night in this country, one out of 10 drivers on the road would be drunk. The statistics are no better now than they were 10 years ago. Here are two of those statistics. Michelle Owen, 16. Sherry Owen, 18, sisters, killed together in a highway accident. >> Sherry was blonde and very beautiful. She wanted to be a child psychologist, worked with emotionally handicapped kids. Her sister, Michelle, was very gifted in dealing with animals. She was um a brilliant horseman. Michelle was in love with Donnie Thurber, high school quarterback. >> Pat Owen is Sher and Michelle's mother. Pat learned of the accident while watching a newscast on TV. I started calling the hospitals. No one would give me an answer. I called the highway patrol. I got no answer. I called the sheriff's department. No one knew anything. Well, of course, by that time, I had nearly decided that the worst, but I thought maybe, you know, the TV had said two known dead. Maybe maybe one of my daughters were still alive. And uh the 11:00 news came on and the first thing that they showed was them pulling my beautiful little girl out of the front seat of that car. My husband said that they pulled them out of the car and put tags on their feet and put them in bags and took them away. >> It was a two-car accident on Highway 65 north of Sacramento on August 23rd, 1980. The Owen sisters were among eight people in two cars who were killed. The driver of a third car, Marty Ascarat, was charged and convicted of felony manslaughter. Prosecutors said he got drunk at a wedding reception and was driving down the highway at 90 mph when he plowed into the rear of one car, causing it to swerve into the path of an oncoming car. He kept on going after the accident. >> It took a long time for it to sink into me what what had really happened, that it wasn't an accident. My children were killed by a means of justifiable homicide. The man who killed him had pre three prior drunk driving arrests, one of which was an accident. He chose to drink. He chose to get in his car and drive without a license. He was driving in excess of 90 m an hour and trying to pass on the right. He killed eight people and left them to die on the side of the road and proceeded on his merry way. >> Marty Carti is now in prison in Susanville, California. >> You'd been arrested before for drunk driving, right? >> Yes, I have. >> How many times? >> Uh, three times prior to the accident. Was there another Was there an accident involved in one of those cases? >> Yes, I had a accident in 78 and hit a power pole. >> What was the toughest punishment you've gotten before? >> Uh I had to pay $500 and uh I did some weekend work for the county. 80% of all the fatal alcohol related auto crashes occur between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. And this is when most of the arrests for DWI or driving while intoxicated are made. Police are trained to look for telltale signs of the drunk driver. And it isn't always speeding or weaving. Drunk drivers often make very wide turns at intersections, and many of them travel way below the speed limit or stop for a light 20 or 30 ft before the intersection. Once a driver has been pulled over, he is often asked questions to check his coherence. Sometimes the police give him an alphabet test. A B C D E F G H I J K L M of P Q U R S T N U V S R >> Q U R S T N UV >> No, that's not how it goes. >> This is usually followed by a series of physical tasks to check the driver's coordination. Just >> rest your hands right there, sir. You're being placed under arrest for driving while under the influence of alcohol, sir. >> Hard. But the one sure way to check for alcohol is the breathalyzer which gives the court the level of blood alcohol concentration. In most states 10 is the legal definition of drunk. John Molden is alcohol specialist of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington. >> The average individual arrested in this country is at a 0.20 blood alcohol concentration. That's twice the legal limit. Just to give people a feel for what that means, if you weighed 180 pounds, to get to the legal limit, you would have to drink six beers within one hour's period of time on an empty stomach. That's just to get the legal limit. People who were resting on average have twice that in them. They're at 0.20. That means in a given evening of say 3 or four hours of drinking, they've had probably 15 beers. Uh this is not social drinking. This is aberant use of alcohol. Uh this notion of uh there but for the grace of God uh God go I is nonsense. The people that we're seeing on the roads and in the courts are not your mainstream social drinker in this country. >> The social drinkers who occasionally drive when they drink are a more subtle problem. A lot of social drinkers have the notion that they drive just as safely with a few drinks as they do cold sober. That's not true. And in Los Angeles, the Alcohol Safety Action Project did a test that proved just that. They took a population sample of 100 people. And out of that group, the 30 people who exhibited the greatest physical resistance to alcohol were chosen. >> This corner right here is exactly the same curvature as this one. >> Each driver was given 8 hours of training over test courses. What counted was quick reflexes, judgment, and sure control. After they established a base score sober on the course, they were given drinks. Most of them had 6 to8 ounces of alcohol in 90 minutes, the equivalent of about five drinks. This brought them to 0.1 on the breathalyzer. Legally intoxicated in California, but still only half of what your average drunk driver shows when arrested. >> I'm bombed. I feel great. I'm intoxicated. >> I'm drunk. They went through the test course at 010 and then through the accident simulator which tested situations like a child jumping in front of the car or another vehicle stopping suddenly in front of him. Not a single driver who went through the course legally drunk was able to perform the tests at anything close to his ability when sober. In test after test, their reflexes, judgment, and control were seriously impaired. >> Tell you one of the biggest problems we got right now. The courts are really getting in the way. You know, every state has a motor vehicle administration. They have the power to resend a license if you're convicted for drunk driving. But that's the catch. With the massive plea bargaining that goes on in this country, taking people that are charged with drunk driving, reducing them to reckless driving, let's say, they are not convicting him of an alcoholrelated charge. That means that the motor vehicle administrator cannot take any action on his license. I think American public would be amazed to know how very few drivers ever lose their license even if they are convicted for drunk driving. Almost all of the police we talk to in doing this report have the same complaint. They arrest drunk drivers and then the drivers are back on the road with little or no punishment. >> When they go to trial, I feel as though that in a lot of instances for repeat offenders, specifically repeat offenders, that there is an injustice being done to the citizens of the state of Maryland and the sentencing that they receive. >> You don't think the judges back you up? In other words, >> not all the judges. Yes, sir. On several cases we've had where the person's been in court one day and maybe two or three days later they're arrested for drunken driving again. >> They don't realize that what they're doing is wrong. They always, you know, try and identify with the murderer, the robber or the rapist. Why aren't aren't you out there, you know, spending your time arresting somebody who's really a criminal? >> When we arrest somebody and we charge them, that's the most we can do. Everything is up to the court system, the motor vehicle administration, and if they don't do their part in making things a little stricter, then we can only go out and arrest them again if they don't kill somebody meanwhile. >> And then there are the prosecutors. If many of the prosecuting attorneys in this country settle these cases with plea bargaining, here's one who doesn't. Tom Hickman of Carroll County, Maryland. >> Mr. Hickman, are you a tough prosecutor? In >> the last election, I was referred to as a hard-nosed prosecutor, and I don't deny that for a minute. I am. I I I'm here to represent the people. I'm their advocate. And if I am not tough, who will be? Uh, so yes, I am a tough prosecutor. >> Are you saying that a lot of your colleagues in Maryland and elsewhere are not? Now I know there are a lot of prosecutors who are automatically off the bat uh without looking at the facts and considering the cases individually taking pleas from for instance the drive while intoxicated charge with his 12 points automatically reducing it to driving while impaired with it six points. I feel that's wrong. I feel that they're uh they're not doing their job. I've told my staff I do not want to be responsible for putting a drunk driver back on the road because I know what can happen. I know they could kill somebody. If it's going to be somebody's responsibility, let it be either the officer who charged who didn't charge high enough in his discretion or let it be the judges who in their discretion give them either probation before verdict or a reduced uh charge. I don't want to be responsible. >> If after many years of trying, the state of Maryland was finally able to back up tough prosecutors like Tom Hickman. Much of the credit may belong to this three-year-old, Laura Lamb of Gathersburg, Maryland. The victim of a drunk driving accident. She's been left crippled for life. Laura's mother, Cindy Lamb, helped start an organization called MAD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. >> We were going to the grocery market on a Saturday afternoon. It was about 12:30. I was going 50 mph, which was a speed limit. And a man came up the hill the other way. He was going about 70 and he hit Laura and I head on. Um, as a result of that accident, I received about 14 broken bones and quite a few stitches and um, Laura's spinal cord was crushed and she's permanently paralyzed from the shoulders down. >> Who was the other driver? >> 37year-old man. Um, fourth time for drunk driving, no insurance, no license, was not his vehicle. Um, he had bought a pint of whiskey about 9 or 9:30 in the morning. Drank that, went back to the store, bought another pint, and there was about this much left in the bottle when he hit Laura and I. What happened to him after that? >> He's in jail now, but I understand he'll be out very shortly, which is generally the case. They don't even go to jail, but in this case, he did. >> He may drive again. >> Oh, he Yeah, he'll be he'll drive again whether he has a license or not. I mean, he didn't have a license before. Um, the way I understand it, he he's an alcoholic. Has a he's a problem drinker. >> So, if you know, if he wants to drive, he'll get in his car and go pick up booze. Sure. Organizations like MAD and RID, remove intoxicated drivers, have been spreading across the country in the past year, trying to make laws tougher and monitoring the conviction records of judges, especially in small towns where drunk driving is often the most common crime. This group of RID volunteers in upstate New York makes the judges records available to the local media and the voters at election time. Rid claims that as a result of exposing these records, four local judges whom the organization considered weak are no longer in office. >> Rid has taken the position that no one should have the right to refuse to take the blood alcohol test. Most states now permit a driver arrested on a driving while intoxicated charge to refuse to take the test. >> That you have the right to refuse to submit to any such test and on your refusal no test shall be administered. If I refuse right >> right now, uh, what does that do right now? >> Charge with driving while intoxicating and get a ticket. If you've got somebody who can come here and pick you up, I'll let you go. If you don't, you'll go to jail. >> Okay. Again, I'm going to refuse. >> You're going to refuse? >> Yeah. >> Okay. The penalty for refusing the test here in Maryland involves loss of the driver's license for a time. But many drivers get around that by pleading that they must drive to get to work. And they're often given partial use of their license. And then there is the problem drinker who's a repeat offender and the social drinker who might occasionally drive when he's drunk. Should they both be treated in the same way? For problem drinkers, prosecutor Tom Hickman would like to see them permanently off the roads. If we revoke the licenses of all drunk drivers, and that's what I feel we should do, absolutely revoke them. We're talking in Carol County this year, uh, about approximately at best, I would say, 300 to 350 people. That's less than 1/ half of 1% of all the licensed drivers in this county. >> What about the What about the case of a man who cannot get to work if he can't drive, so he can't support his family? >> I do not believe that. I believe that people are always going to be able to get to work. they'll find some way to get to work either with people who work on the same shift they do, the same employer from the same area or public transportation or their relatives take them, a spouse takes them or a child, what have you, people are going to be able to get to work. And I think that's a small price to pay to get 300 uh drivers and out of 104,000 people in our county off the road and prevent them from causing what amounts to more than half of all our fatalities on the highway. Would you uh favor automatic reinstatements or would he have to prove something? >> Not automatic replication. A license is a privilege. There's no reference in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution about you have a right to drive. >> Most authorities agree that short of taking away licenses of repeat offenders permanently. The only possible solution lies in treatment programs with mandatory attendance and run by experienced groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. But treatment programs that work cost money and commitment. And that is something that this country so far has seldom seen fit to give. Until that happens nationally, drunk driving will be with us. >> Do they ever offer you a treatment program? >> Uh they had a program. It was SP38 program. Uh it was supposed to be for uh alcoholics, but uh we didn't really touch on the matter of alcoholism too much or the drunk driver. >> Are you getting any help now? No, not uh I'm on a waiting list, but uh so far I can't uh receive them. >> Would you be afraid if you got out in 3 years without treatment? Would you be afraid you might slip back into the same pattern? >> Yeah, I believe I I possibly could. >> I can't stand back and watch 68 mothers bury their child every day because I didn't act. And I hope that anyone who can hear my voice can learn the same thing. Do something before your child dies. Don't wait until you've suffered like I have because once once it's done, once this incident happens, there is nothing on earth that is going to change it. There is nothing that can ever make it any better.