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"Charlotte's Law" Would Take Away NYS Driver's Licenses After 3 Strikes
By
Garth Johnston
Published May 30, 2012
Modified May 30, 2012
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By
Garth Johnston
Published May 30, 2012
Modified May 30, 2012
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Drivers in New York can, and do, get away with murder. But if something called Charlotte's Law makes it through Albany, it could soon become harder to be a serial car killer. If the bill goes through, New York would be home to one of the toughest road safety laws in the union. Basically Charlotte's Law is a "three strikes" rule that would permanently terminate licenses of New York drivers who habitually break the law in life threatening ways.
Charlotte's Law gets its name from Charlotte Gallo, a Schenectady woman who was killed in January 2010 by a driver who, according to the Times Union, had 23 prior traffic citations and had been involved in 10 crashes. He walked away from the Gallo's death with a $100 fine for failure to yield and a one-year license revocation. Things would have been different if Charlotte's Law were on the books. It "would permanently take away the licenses of those convicted of any of these offenses three or more times in 25 years: DUI or DWI; a violation of VTL 1146, which includes the state’s vulnerable user laws; or vehicular manslaughter."
In pushing the law, Republican Schenectady-Saratoga Assemblyman Jim Tedisco very reasonably points out that “Unlike the right to be safe on New York’s roads, driving is not a right, it’s a privilege. Families have a right to know they and their loved ones will be protected from serial drunk and dangerous drivers who become human weapons when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle. The message of this bill for drunk and dangerous drivers is ‘three strikes and you’re out. You lose your driving privileges in New York State forever.'"
It's pretty hard to express how much we like the potential in this bill, which appears to have bi-partisan support (unlike a similar bill which "failed to gain traction in the Democrat-controlled Assembly," according to the Times Union).
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