Save a life: drive above the influence

On June 28, the driver of a speeding SUV plowed into a Deer Park nail salon, killing four people, including off-duty NYPD officer Emilia Rennhack. Authorities say the driver of the car, a 64-year-old Dix Hills resident, was intoxicated, and had consumed 18 beers just the night before.

Sadly, this tragedy is not unique, as fatal traffic collisions involving intoxicated and impaired drivers have surged on Long Island since the coronavirus pandemic.

Last Aug. 7, an 18-year-old Freeport man was intoxicated when he raced through a red light in West Hempstead and crashed into a parked car, killing Katerine Vanges Hernandez just two days before her seventh birthday.

Just a day earlier, a 33-year-old man from Lindenhurst was under the influence of fentanyl and cocaine when he rocketed his car into a vehicle stopped at a traffic light. The violent collision killed U.S. Marine veteran Patrice Huntley, his 13-year-old daughter, Hannah, his 10-year-old son, Jeremiah, and, eventually, his 6-year-old step-granddaughter Chantel, who succumbed to her injuries six days later. The driver reportedly reached a speed of 120 miles per hour, and failed to brake until a half-second before impact, hitting the Huntley family car at 95 mph.

Each of these tragedies was devastating, and perhaps even worse, they were all preventable. As news headlines remind us daily, families will have to live the rest of their lives with the physical, mental and emotional trauma and irreparable loss caused by someone else’s poor judgment.

According to a recent report from State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the pandemic had a negative impact on traffic safety in New York. From 2019 to 2022, the report stated, the state saw a 45 percent increase in the number of fatalities involving drivers with blood alcohol levels above the legal limit, which is 12 percentage points above the national average. In 2022, about two-thirds of traffic fatalities in New York involved a combination of unsafe speeding and alcohol.

The recent increase in fatalities has been attributed to increased risks taken by drivers. Research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states, “After the declaration of the public health emergency in March 2020, driving patterns and behaviors in the U.S. changed significantly. Of the drivers who remained on the roads, some engaged in riskier behavior including speeding, failure to wear seat belts, and driving under the influence.”

According to a recent Newsday report, lawmakers and safe-driving advocates are renewing calls to lower New York’s legal blood alcohol content level from 0.08 to 0.05 percent. But this policy change would place a disproportionate burden on law enforcement. Traffic stops, checkpoints and arrests have their place, but are just one piece of the traffic-safety puzzle.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles and the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee could and should be doing more to promote programming and resources to ensure driver, pedestrian and road safety. Culturally, the DMV has been reduced to a bureaucratic, inconvenient, soul-sucking entity, and appears to be divorced from proactive efforts to ensure safety on the roads.

For example, the DMV has an Impaired Driver Program available not only through court mandates, but to anyone who wants to join voluntarily. The IDP offers in-depth education on alcohol and other drugs to help participants identify and change high-risk behavior. The program needs to be better promoted and advertised, and made more accessible.

Safe-driving advocates such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving are also calling for the widespread implementation of driver assistance, monitoring and alcohol-detection systems in vehicles across the U.S.

Driver-assistance technology enables a car to take action such as lane-keeping assistance and collision intervention. Driver monitoring systems include cameras or other sensors that monitor such things as eye movement without compromising privacy, advocates say. Alcohol-detection sensors in the vehicle determine whether a driver is drunk, keeping the public safe while ensuring privacy.

Many of these technologies are on the way, as the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 authorized the U.S. Department of Transportation to complete a rule-making process and issue final safety standards for impaired-driving-prevention technology on all new cars by November 2024.

No matter your preference or politics, it will take a comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck effort to ensure that more children and families are not harmed, and that the victims of these fatal collisions did not die in vain.

Karl A. Valere is chief of staff and senior policy adviser of Assemblyman Khaleel M. Anderson. He lives in Baldwin.