Kill on the road. Get off with a ticket.

Shane Farthing, executive director of WABA has an opinion piece in the Post about the Maryland vehicular manslaughter law.

You probably think that if a negligent driver kills a member of your family, that person would face the prospect of jail time. But if you live in Maryland, you would likely be wrong. Currently, Maryland law has no mechanism for criminal punishment of a driver who kills another unless there is evidence of intoxication or gross negligence. Gross negligence is an unreasonably high standard that essentially means proving “reckless disregard for life.” In the real world, this standard is almost never met.

With less than two weeks left in Maryland’s legislative session, the House of Delegates has unanimously passed House Bill 363, which would fix the gap that allows negligent drivers to kill other road users and get off with a traffic ticket that can be discharged without even interrupting their day to appear in court.

Despite this unanimous House passage and strong support in the Senate, however, Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman Brian Frosh (D-Montgomery) has shown reluctance to penalize the guilty party in fatal negligent driving crashes — empathizing with the driver rather than the deceased and family left behind.

Frosh says that advocates need to define “precisely what their target is.” Okay, how’s this? The target of the bill is someone who kills another as a result of behavior that is a substantial deviation from the standard of care expected. In other words, it is aimed at those who do not just deviate from the duty to drive like a reasonably prudent person, but those who deviate a great deal. Someone guilty of simple negligence would not be charged under the law.

And this bill does “thread the needle” — the standard Frosh says he is seeking — between simple negligence and gross negligence. In fact, all it would do is put Maryland on par with most other states, using a mechanism derived from the respected and often-utilized Model Penal Code.

Frosh has expressed the worry that a mother could be jailed following the death of her child in a crash for which she was at fault. But the law offers flexibility by setting a maximum standard of three years, with no minimum, while leaving prosecutors and judges discretion in charging and sentencing. In the 20 states that have adopted this standard, no court has ever convicted a mother of killing her own child. Such tortured hypotheticals simply do not reflect reality.

Frosh’s comments suggest that he thinks civil penalties are a sufficient punishment for negligence. But civil suits are meant to deal with disputes between private citizens. We use the criminal code of a state to express what behaviors are so out of bounds as to be worthy of sanction. Operating a vehicle in a manner so negligent that it substantially deviates from the driving of a reasonable person ought to be on that list.

Passing House Bill 363 is the way to make this statement, giving the state a tool that it could exercise when appropriate to prevent the sort of absurd result experienced by Ed and Kathy Kohls, whose 15-year-old son, Connor, was killed by a driver proceeding at a speed well in excess of both the speed limit and his ability to control his vehicle. The driver received mere traffic citations.

But they know that his behavior has not changed, as he has since been convicted of driving under the influence. Given the gap that exists in Maryland law, perhaps such a charge is the only way to get a driver like this off the road. Under current law, a driver can kill a Connor Kohls without facing the possibility of criminal sanction — so long as he does so negligently rather than drunkenly.

While I certainly support drunken driving laws, they do not cover everything. There are many dangerous, deadly, reckless, substantially negligent things one can do behind the wheel. It’s time for Maryland to send a message that doing one of those, and taking the life of another person, is unacceptable.

The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday to decide whether the bill can move forward. We hope that Chairman Frosh, the committee and the Senate will do the right thing by passing House Bill 363.

Comments

[SJE]

The sad thing is that the DUI carries a stiffer penalty than killing someone.

The whole point of DUI laws is to minimize the risk you pose to others by being drunk...to control death and injury. But when someone actually kills, you can get off with a ticket.

[velodc]

My take

http://velodc.blogspot.com/