‘Lax’ sentence in the Bilski impaired causing death case

Leave it to Cleever – By Brian Cleeve

Four women are dead, countless lives are disrupted and a man goes to jail for four years.

It just doesn’t seem right. But that’s exactly what happened recently in a Chatham courtoom as Wladyslaw Bilski, convicted of killing four women while driving drunk, was sent away for only four years. That’s one year for every life he took.

Had Bilski used a gun or a knife or had he driven his car directly at them in an attempt to kill them, he would have been put away for a much longer period of time.

While he did not set out with the intent of killing anyone, the result is the same.

He made a choice to drink and drive, to put his desires and pleasures ahead of the safety of other people and as a result four innocent women, the “pie ladies,” paid with their lives.

No one can accurately access what other torments the driver is going through, whether he’s truly sorry that his action cost lives or whether he’s only sorry that he got caught. That’s between him and his conscience.

But for the rest of us, this is a travesty of epic proportions. It is one that lawmakers need to address.

Any person who drinks and gets behind the wheel of a vehicle is playing with the lives of other people. He/she has a loaded gun just waiting to fire. Because of that wanton disregard for the lives and safety of other people, any person who hurts or kills someone while impaired should be looking at major consequences, several years behind bars and a permanent loss of driver’s licence. Anyone caught driving while a licence is under suspension should be sent immediately to jail, because that individual having broken the law, is not willing to accept the deserved punishment.

It’s ironic that drug pushers who sell a product that people want are sent to prison for much longer periods of time.

This lax attitude -and yes four years behind bars for four deaths is lax – probably means our society hasn’t accepted the devastation that impaired driving is causing. Despite advertising campaigns, designated drivers, Operation Red Nose, and a whole host of other ideas to keep drunks off the roads, some idiots still insist on drinking and driving.

It’s only been in the last 30 years or so that everyone lost their licence for drunk driving. In the mid 70s people were still able to get “restricted privileges” allowing them to drive their vehicles at certain times of day for certain purposes.

And there was the “one for the road” concept of having that last drink before departing for a trip.

Today, we take drinking and driving more seriously, but it appears not seriously enough.

Here we have a man whose actions caused the deaths of four innocent people and he’s incarcerated for only four years.

We should be writing to our elected representatives to get the laws changed. People who drink and drive and kill should be locked away as long as someone who would use any other weapon to do their damage. They should not be allowed to drive again.

They have shown they don’t care a bit for anyone else and so they should be put away where they can’t hurt other people.