Drunken driving law not consistently applied

Legal experts suggested that the Supreme People's Court should make a judicial interpretation to standardize the penalties for drunken driving, Beijing News reported.

The recommendation was made at a seminar on May 11 organized by the Ministry of Public Security and the China Law Society to review the effect of stipulations in the amended Criminal Law and Road Traffic Safety Law, which both took effect May 1, 2011.

In the past year, local courts around the country have given different penalties for drunken driving, some of them strict and others mild, experts suggested.

According to the Beijing News report, on June 3, a man was exempted from criminal punishment after being caught driving while drunk in Western China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The local court said his blood alcohol content was only slightly over the legal limit and he showed a good attitude by confessing.

After that, similar exemptions in drunken driving cases occurred in many other provinces. In each, the drivers were "not so drunk", "showed a good attitude" and "hadn't caused deaths, injuries or property losses", the report said.

According to the report, more than 40 percent of defendants in drunken driving cases heard in many provinces in China were sentenced to probation, and in some cities it was as much as 73 percent.

Zhao Bingzhi, dean of the Criminal Law Research Institute at Beijing Normal University, said light sentences are given in drunken driving cases. If probation and exemptions were frequent, the deterrent factor from criminal sentencing would falter.

"Exemptions should be given only in very few cases where the drivers were only slightly over the blood alcohol limit and only minimal damage was done. Most drunken drivers must be sentenced," he said.

Moreover, difficulties have arisen in determining drivers' blood alcohol content, according to the report. Some drivers start drinking immediately after pulling over so police will not know if they were drunk while driving, some have closed and locked their car doors and windows and remained in the car for hours, some told police they had infectious diseases to evade breath analysis testing, and some even tried to drive through checkpoints.

Yu Lingyun, a law professor at Tsinghua University said that current law does not lay out how to deal with suspects who evade blood-alcohol testing. They can be charged with disturbing police business, which carries a 5 to 10 day jail sentence and a 500 yuan fine — no deterrent power at all.

The experts at the seminar suggested that judicial interpretations are needed to standardize the penalties.

Drunken drivers caused 3,555 accidents last year, 18.8 percent less than in 2010, and killed 1,220 people, 37.7 percent less than in 2010, according to the report.

The amended Criminal Law stipulates that all drunken driving incidents are criminal offenses, whereas the previous law imposed criminal penalties on drunken drivers only when they caused serious traffic accidents.

The amended Road Traffic Safety Law stipulates that convicted drunken drivers will have their driving licenses revoked, instead of suspended, as in the previous law.