The Behavioral Impact of Drinking and Driving Laws by Bertelli and Rich

A few years ago, my family and I had a drunk driver crash through our front yard. This person tore up grass, destroyed pine tree, and broke numerous lawn ornaments. Less than twenty minutes before this drunk driver went through our yard, my mom and I had been walking our dogs, and if the drunk driver had gone through any earlier, my mom and I both would have been hit. This driver also destroyed a garbage barrel, and almost slammed into an electrical pole. In a way, the drunk driver had been lucky when he went through our yard, especially when we had just taken a gigantic walnut tree out of our yard two or three years prior. The driver also had two passengers with him, a woman, and a small child. The child passenger had been unbuckled, and amazingly, was not thrown from the rear of the vehicle. After going through our yard, the drunk driver had oil leaking from his car, at least two flat tires, and damage to the front of his car. Eventually, the drunk driver was caught by the police, and placed in jail. The insurance company that represents my family assessed the damage done, and said that the total cost of the damage would equal almost two thousand dollars. The driver was only required to pay my family three hundred dollars and nothing more than this amount. After receiving this amount, my family and I never heard anything else about the driver who had destroyed our yard, and have not received any other dollar amount since that incident. Looking back on this, I wonder if there is anything that allows a drunk driver to be sued for destroying a person’s property. In the article, The Behavioral Impact of Drinking and Driving Laws by Bertelli and Richardson Jr. (2008), the authors make the statement that driving under the... ...Policy Studies Journal, 36(4), 545-569. doi:10.1111/j.1541-0072.2008.00283.x Carpenter, C. (2004). How do Zero Tolerance Drunk Driving Laws work? Journal of Health Economics, 23(1), 61-83. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2003.08.005 Chang, K., Wu, C., & Ying, Y. (2012). The effectiveness of alcohol control policies on alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the United States. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 45, 406-415. doi:10.1016/j.aap.2011.08.008 Cismaru, M., Lavack, A. M., & Markewich, E. (2009). Social marketing campaigns aimed at preventing drunk driving : A review and recommendations. International Marketing Review, 26(3), 292-311. doi:10.1108/02651330910960799 Voas, R. B., Romano, E., & Peck, R. (2009). Validity of surrogate measures of alcohol involvement when applied to nonfatal crashes. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 41(3), 522-530. doi:10.1016/j.aap.2009.02.004