Hmmmm…. I think a wall of shame might be more of an incentive for the occasional ‘have a few drinks and get behind the wheel’ offender than legal gyrations alone. For those who drink and drive regularly nothing much stops them including the legal ramifications.
As to the ineffectiveness of our current laws, in this state a 2nd offense DUI within 10 years can be charged as a felony. You want mandatory minimum sentencing? Lock ‘em up and throw away the key? Exactly how stiff do you want laws to be?
Reasons vary and maybe the employer just didn’t want a drunk working in an area where he could hurt or kill himself or others. Damage a lot of expensive equipment or customers property. After all the person who doesn’t have enough sense not to get behind the wheel after drinking might not exercise much sense about working and drinking. Mechanics generally have to be able to test drive vehicles, drop off and pick up vehicles. Can’t do that without a license.
That should be the employer’s right to protect his customers and their property in his care, other employees and his business assets from damage or liability awards and that his or her employees should be expected to fulfill their job duties.
Another reason the guy lost his job may well have been the inability to insure him on the business owners policy.
When we had a business, one of the very specific items that all employees signed off on when we hired them was they had to have and maintain a valid license, had to be insurable on our liability and comprehensive insurance and they had to keep their driving record clean, including traffic violations, to be employed with us. Failure to do so was grounds for termination. No exceptions.
Our insurance would cancel our business in a heart beat if we kept employed someone who lost their license for any reason or had more than 2 minor traffic violations within any 2 year period. If they were under 25 more than 1 minor violation like speeding would do it. A major violation like a DUI was grounds for automatic termination of the policy if we kept the employee on. Our insurance company ran each employee’s license (including the owners) every year.
We really didn’t have a choice, not that we wouldn’t have terminated employment for these reasons anyway. This was consistent across insurance companies for our type of business and insurance needs.
I am not sure if this is accurate but I read a story a number of years ago indicating that countries which don’t have high drinking and driving numbers (like Japan) utilize shame as a big incentive to not get behind the wheel. However in many Asian countries shame is a big cultural motivator. It might not be a significant factor here.
I’m not sure it’s the job of the County Supervisor to do this though. Seems like the legal system should be involved some where but it could depend on how county government is set up in that state. The Supervisor being at the top. And it could depend on what the state legislature has made law as well.
