Administrative license revocation as a tool for dealing with the problem drinking driver.

In an attempt to delineate at least some of the potential ways in which the overall enforcement/judicial/treatment systems may be missing opportunities to prevent multiple drunken driving offences, the United States Safety Board investigated 50 traffic crashes involving 56 drunken drivers and 73 fatalities. The 56 drunken drivers had accumulated 164 arrests for offences involving alcohol, including 131 for drunken driving. The present paper concentrates on problem areas revealed by these cases in the enforcement, judicial and treatment systems where different handling might have altered behaviour and possibly averted a crash. These are: a) delays between arrest and adjudication; b) plea bargaining; b) plea bargaining; c) diversion and supervision programs; d) deficient training of judges and prosecutors, and e) deficient court and motor vehicle department records systems. It is suggested that these problems can be ameliorated through the implementation of administrative license penalties. Twenty five states in the usa have adopted some form of these laws. The process allows the arresting officer to take possession of a driver's licence if the driver either refuses a breath test or fails the test. The driver is given a temporary permit which expires in a short time (usually 1 or 2 weeks), at which time the licence is suspended or revoked for a specified period. The administrative penalty is imposed regardless of the outcome of judicial processing.