The poll that is up today asks “Does Wisconsin need to stiffen up its drunk driving law to include harsher penalties for first-time offenders?”

Well, I voted “yes”, but do I think it will matter when it comes to drunks not driving?  Nope.  I think there should be city run services that allow people to get home from a bar without having to drive.  I know, I know, there are a lot of ways to get home without driving, but if the city offered ONE, it would be something.

Maybe a private company could offer drunk rides home between midnight and 3am on the weekends.  Do you think that people would pay $5 for a ride home instead of $XXX for a drunk driving?  In my opinion, I think they would.  You could easily market that service throughout the bars in the city and I think that you would have a full bus in no time.

The only problem would be the people that need to get home and live all the way across the city.  You would almost need some sort of route to follow and just pick “Joe” up here and drop “Joe” off there kind of thing.  I really think it’s something that would curb the drunks driving in the city.  And really, if it’s only 1%, isn’t that something?

If there are 750 people busted per year for drunk driving, this service would save 7-8 people from driving home drunk.  Now, that might look like a small number, but what if 2 of the 7-8 crashed and killed someone?  Now we are talking about saving lives instead of OWI fines.