During my last visit to the optometrist, my eye doctor said to me, "Think about it this way: It's safer to be in Iraq right now than it is to drive down the street in Arizona."
The good ol' Doc brought up an interesting point. According to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving Web site (www.madd.org), in 2002 there were 477 people killed in Arizona by drunken drivers. That averages out to about 9.2 people killed every week. And according to the Web site www.Antiwar.com, 184 Americans have died in Iraq since May 1, 2003. If my math is correct, that averages out to about 8.4 people each week.
Perhaps it was optometrists - or statistics like these - that prompted a coalition of law enforcement and traffic safety advocates to come before the state legislature with a proposal that said convicted drunken drivers should be forced to pay the cost of publishing their names in the East Valley Tribune.
Then again, maybe they realized that drunken driving is a problem in Arizona.
"I want to get those buggers off the streets," Sen. Marilynn Jarrett of Mesa told the Tribune.
While getting those "buggers" off the street definitely is something worthy of legislators' attention, the proposal, known as "Robin's Law," should be reconsidered.
Making a law that forces people to give a newspaper money is a conflict of interest. The situation could set up a huge money-making opportunity for the paper that is going to publish the names. As Arizona's House Speaker pro tempore Bob Robson said, "When that becomes an advertisement, it changes the journalistic mission of a newspaper."
The Tribune really could rake in some money if every DUI out there led to a sale. Since making money is almost an editorial taboo, it leads to an unethical situation. The government basically handing over a contract to the paper that will give it money for doing something for them is not an association that should be shared between the two entities.
This ethical conflict could be solved if the Tribune volunteered to print the names as a public service.
Even if it doesn't cause an ethical dilemma, it really isn't going to make that much of a difference. People don't pay enough attention to the paper for it to cause an appropriate amount of embarrassment to the driver.
There are just too many problems with this law for it to actually happen. However, we can't just let the problem go unsolved. A mandatory 10-day sentence in the tent city sounds like a good start, but if we're going to follow the path of public humiliation, there are better alternatives.
Instead of publishing the driver's name, there could be bulletin boards at bars that have the mug shot of every frequent customer who has been pulled over for a DUI in the past month. Or we could put a big bumper sticker on his or her car that reads: "LOOK OUT! I MAY BE TOTALLY WASTED."
"Robin's Law" has the right idea. Punishing people who drive under the influence is crucial, but the specifics of "Robin's Law" won't be effective and will just bring about more problems.
Chris Fanning is a journalism junior. Reach him at christopher.fanning@asu.edu.
