Tommy Washbush
Drunk driving
I’m as Wisconsin as they come. I play sheepshead and drink beer. After a long day in the woods, I enjoy a Manhattan at deer camp. I like to have a brandy old fashioned before my fish fry.
Let’s face it. Alcohol plays a role in Wisconsin life. To some extent, that’s fine, but we often take it too far.
That became tragically clear yet again when three young men were killed in a drunk driving crash in the town of Middleton last month. Eric Mehring is charged with homicide by drunk driving and reckless homicide in the deaths of Jack Miller, Simon Bilessi and Evan Kratochwill. Miller and Kratochwill were students at Middleton High School while Bilessi went to West.
According to the charges, on the night of Oct. 2, Mehring was driving at 75 miles per hour when he struck the teenagers’ vehicle from behind, sending it into a field where it started on fire. A test found his alcohol blood level exceeded the legal limit for driving by three times.
In addition to other charges, Mehring faces a minimum of five years behind bars for each of the three homicides. But that modest minimum sentence was only recently put in place by the Legislature because judges were handing out even lighter sentences.
That bill was sponsored by Rep. Jim Ott (R-Mequon), who focused much of his legislative career on strengthening drunk driving laws. And how was he thanked? Ott was one of only two incumbent Assembly Republicans to lose their seats in 2020.
The sad truth is that Wisconsin’s embarrassingly weak drunk driving laws are just a reflection of a broader problem. In a recent study, The 50 Drunkest Counties in America, the website 24/7 Wall St. used data from County Health Rankings & Roadmaps report, a joint program between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, to identify the counties with the highest excessive drinking rates.
The study was based on surveys that asked how much alcohol people had consumed in the last 30 days. Heavy drinking was defined as more than two drinks per day for men and more than one per day for women. Binge drinking was defined as four or more drinks at one time for a woman or five or more for a man.
And the results? In an odd juxtaposition, 24/7 Wall St. decided to use Chamber of Commerce-worthy photos for each community on the list. As you scroll though it you’ll see one familiar bucolic scene after another. That’s because you’re looking at home.
Wisconsin busted the breathalyzer. Out of 3,106 places in the study, Wisconsin had 41 out of the top 50 drunkest counties and we captured the top 11. Outagamie was the drunkest county in the nation. Dane ranked number 25.
Let’s look at that another way. Out of 3,106 U.S. counties in the study, Wisconsin had 41 of the top 50. That means that out of the 1.6 percent drunkest places in America, Wisconsin captured 82 percent of them.
Even in health conscious Dane County, 27 percent of us reported drinking heavily or binge drinking. And 34 percent of fatal vehicle crashes here involved alcohol. That puts us in the top 25 percent of counties for the kind of crash that killed those three students.
Now, it’s entirely possible that these results are skewed. It’s plausible that, since all of this is based on self-reporting, that Wisconsinites are simply more honest about their drinking than those in other parts of the country. But even that would tell you something. We drink a lot and we don’t see the problem.
Last year then-Rep.-Elect Francesca Hong, from Madison’s east side, got into a dustup for using a nasty word to describe the Wisconsin Tavern League. A restaurant owner herself, Hong was taking on the powerful lobby for their resistance to COVID protocols.
While I wouldn’t have used her phraseology, she was right to be frustrated by the League. And COVID isn’t the only public health issue they’re wrong about. That paltry five-year minimum sentence for killing someone while driving drunk? It only passed because the Tavern League didn’t oppose it.
Generations of legislators have tried to make first offense OWI a crime in Wisconsin. We are one of only a few states where it’s a civil charge. No dice. The Tavern League is staunchly opposed. It appears that this is the first time Mehring was caught drunk driving. So, if he had done what he did, but hadn’t ended up killing three young men, he would probably have gotten off with a fine.
Because the Democrats are not likely to retake the Legislature anytime soon, and because they likely wouldn’t oppose the Tavern League even if they did, don’t look to lawmakers to solve this problem for us.
Eric Mehring, 30, may spend a good part of his young life in prison. But if that doesn’t deter you from drinking and driving, don’t think about what he may lose. Think about what those three kids and their families and friends have already lost.
Dave Cieslewicz is a writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. He also blogs at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
