Written by This recent story about the tragic deaths of two Grandview Washington children came to my attention in a reader comment. My heart is with the families of these precious innocent children who were taken from this life way too soon. I’m highlighting this story in a post because it illustrates the limitations of DUI laws under the 2021 non-pursuit law, something I recently dedicated a whole blog entry and analysis to: New DUI law will have little to no impact without restoring police pursuit.
A state patrol officer observed a driver speeding at 111 miles per hour. He tried to stop the reckless driver, but the driver sped off and the 2021 non-pursuit law prevented the trooper from chasing and stopping him. An hour later the same driver was going the wrong way on I-82 and crashed into another car, killing a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl in that car and sending three others with serious injuries to Seattle area hospitals. Police preliminarily believe alcohol or drugs contributed to the deadly accident.
In this sequence of events the driver was in an identifiable car, presumably with a license plate, and the State Patrol was able to put the timeline together enough to realize the same car and driver were at both encounters. If it was dark, or the vehicle had no plates, or different agencies were involved, it’s likely that authorities may not have made the connection between the speeding driver and the fatal accident an hour later.
Washington’s highway fatality rate suggests we’re experiencing events similar to this at a statewide rate of about one or two per week since the non-pursuit law went into effect, contributing to our 21 percent increase in highway fatalities. Troopers and local police agencies have lost their ability to get the worst reckless drivers off our roads before they kill someone. Obviously lowering the Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) from 0.08 to 0.05 will have no impact on events like these unless police get back their authority to chase and detain reckless drivers.
State legislators who claim to be saving lives by the 2021 non-pursuit law are negligently contributing to these deadly accidents. The current death toll is in the hundreds.
Thank you David Hackney, Carmen Rivera, and Bob Hasegawa!
Now that you got your way, please resign. Your work here is done.
It’s worse. There were multiple contacts before the kids were killed.
We really need to hold out electives accountable for these deaths. It’s one thing to get wrapped up in the “defund the police” mania, it’s entirely different to let the carnage continue year over year.
I agree. It’s inexcusable what the legislators are doing. The data is right in front of them. People are dying much faster than being saved by these negligent laws, at about fifty to one. At this point its starting to look like legislators are putting motorists’ lives in jeopardy to collect endorsements and campaign cash, and nothing else.