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VietnameseMinnesota Saves Lives – Increases Penalties for Non-impaired Crashes
ORAL FLUID LEGISLATION TALKING POINTS
September 19, 2016What is a Crime Victims’ Fund?
September 19, 2016Minnesota Saves Lives – Increases Penalties for Non-impaired Crashes
After over 12 years of bringing legislation to enhance the penalty for causing a serious non-alcohol related crash resulting in death or serious injury to the state legislature in Minnesota, the coalition finally had a victory. The coalition was made up of Minnesotans for Safe Driving, Minnesota Bicycle Alliance, and ABATE of Minnesota which is the educational group for Motorcyclists.
In Minnesota if you cause a crash with injury or death and you were DWI or DUI you will be charged with a felony. But if drugs or alcohol were not involved, the driver would be charged either with a traffic violation that may become a misdemeanor or with a careless driving misdemeanor. Recently a couple of texting cases have been charged with a felony. In Minnesota, a misdemeanor is a crime with a possibility of 90 days in jail and/or a$1000 fine and 1 year probation. The license suspension is 90 days for injury and 180 days for death.
What the group had been asking for these many years was to enhance the penalty to a gross misdemeanor if death or serious injury was the result of these crashes. (Minnesota uses a gross misdemeanor the way many states use low level felonies) A gross misdemeanor carries a maximum penalty of 1 year in jail and/or $3000 fine and 2 years’ probation.
We had always wanted a straight enhancement of the penalty for all careless driving chargeable crashes but some in the legislature, and it only takes a few in a committee, just did not want to enhance the penalty for “simple” distracted driving. We were going to fail again if we didn’t change the language to make it for those that should have known that their driving behavior was dangerous. For some reason long ago, our statue had both careless and reckless being a misdemeanor but the definition of reckless was such a high standard that it was rarely used. We chose to change the reckless language and enhance that charge. This seemed to make the difference and our bill was finally passed and signed by the Governor last week.
The new legislation is here: Minnesotans for Safe Driving New Legislation. This law will not mandate the enhancement, the prosecutor can still charge the careless that will not be enhanced, but it will allow a prosecutor to charge a reckless that will be enhanced or if they can prove a higher standard of negligence the prosecutor can charge a felony. Only time will tell how judges and juries will feel about the change. Right now very few are getting much in the way of jail time, but the public is changing on how they feel about these non-alcohol related crashes especially if cell phones are used. But one of the main reasons for wanting the enhancement was for the victims and their families. All other crimes are enhanced for personal injury or death. You could hit a pole while driving with no injury, or do aggressive driving, or get 3 speeding tickets in a year and be charged a misdemeanor, but if you killed someone the charge was still only a misdemeanor. Having the offender charged with the term Careless seemed to lessen the action taken by that offender many victims told me. The word reckless was more appropriate. Hopefully our change in statue will help other states in passing stronger penalties for non-alcohol related crashes.
Nancy Johnson
Legislative Liaison for Minnesotans for Safe Driving
Minnesotans for Safe Driving is a We Save Lives partner
2 Comments
yes I do agree with you 100% I was struck by a speeding motorists and car was totaled and the police officer gave me the ticket for failure to yeld and I had to go to court and pay fine and be put on probation the other driver never put his brakes on or even try to get out of the way of my car and plowed right into mine I was crossing the road and had time if the other car had been doing the correct speed but the police officer never really did any type of investigation the other driver admitted that he was doing 55 and the officer put in the report that the speed limit was 55 when I went to the accident site to take pictures and look for the marks from his tires there was non and the speed limit sign clearly says that speed limit is 50 most people I talked to say that if you are doing 55 you are most likely doing 60 or better the speed limit is 50 from the accident site on 61 all the way up through Hugo 50 so there’s no excuse for no one to know what the limits are on 61
thanks for doing the work to make the world a better place we need more people to take action but all people want to do is vent rather then taking about get together to solve issues that would make the community’s safer especially when we are in the year 2026 there’s a lot that needs change i don’t get people anymore it’s like the whole world is off there rocker all people seem to think about is the me me and nothing else maybe you recall when Minnesota was one of the last states to lower the alcohol levels from .12 to .08 and when they refused to do what the feds wanted for every year that they had refused to lower the alcohol to .08 the feds held back funding I don’t recall the amount off hand it was long ago but it was four years until they were losing so much money that they Minnesota had to give in most people don’t know that fact and then we had the 35 bridge incident and that was due to the funds lost there was no money for repairing the roads and look at the shape of the roads and bridges today they are a big mess and we the tax payers can’t get a head of the cost so look ahead into the future and what do you see more roads that can’t take anymore quick patch job that doesn’t hold up and more bridges that will not be save to cross and or toll bridges to pay for the repairs o account of the loss of funds the part that really kills me about that is that mad mother’s had started in Minnesota and we were one of the last states to lower the limit I think it was a big slap in the face of all the mad mother’s just saying