Dragnet widened for chronic bad drivers
When he lost control of his Ferrari and slammed into another car, killing a mother and her young son, Matthew Lane already had a history of chronic speeding.
In the days after the crash that killed all three in the fall of 2005, authorities vowed to close a loophole in the Illinois courts system that allowed Lane to drive legally despite dozens of traffic tickets.
They unveiled Wednesday a new DuPage County computer program that contains more detailed, up-to-date information about motorists' records to allow screening before they are allowed back on the road.
The database includes convictions, court supervisions and pending tickets in DuPage County and anything that appears in Illinois Secretary of State records.
Planners hope the state's 102 counties will share their information. DeKalb already is on board; Kane and Will are considering joining. In DuPage, the system is available in traffic courtrooms through computer terminals.
"Judges and prosecutors on a daily basis are in the business of risk assessment," DuPage State's Attorney Joseph Birkett said at a news conference. "The best indicator for a driver's future behavior is past behavior. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be better? Yes. Will it save lives? Yes."
The new program, developed by DuPage Circuit Clerk Chris Kachiroubas' chief deputy, Dewey Hartman, is up and running. The office handles some 190,000 traffic tickets a year. It is offering the software to other counties for free with the caveat they share their information, too.
If not, the secretary of state records should capture the offenses, but there can be a delay and pending cases aren't recorded.
On Oct. 10, 2005, Matthew Lane, 27, of Wheaton crossed into oncoming traffic and crashed into a car carrying 23-year-old Nicole Westerhoff and her son, Devin, 4, on Fabyan Parkway in West Chicago. All three died.
Judges came under fire in that case, as well as others, for repeatedly granting Lane court supervision -- a probationary period in which a driver can escape a conviction by not getting another ticket during that time. Lane had racked up about 60 tickets, mostly for speeding.
In response, judges said prosecutors did not provide them with the offender's complete driving records. Two earlier cases also highlighted a similar scenario:
• Truck driver John Stokes was driving legally despite numerous traffic citations when he collided with an Amtrak train March 15, 1999, in Bourbonnais. Eleven people died and 121 were injured.
• Steven Szucs, then of Glen Ellyn, racked up at least 20 traffic tickets in five years but still was allowed to drive until an alcohol-related Sept. 1, 1998, crash in Wheaton that killed two young men, who also were intoxicated.
A law, which Secretary of State Jesse White pushed for, was supposed to make sure that didn't happen again. It limits drivers to no more than two supervisions in any 12-month period.
But, a year after the Jan. 1, 2006, law was enacted, records examined by the Daily Herald showed that despite a significant decline, thousands of drivers still managed to get at least three supervisions while keeping their licenses. Some examples:
• Cook County had the most motorists who weren't caught by the law: 1,755. There, 58 people repeatedly ticketed each received five supervisions. Twelve drivers were granted six supervisions each, and one person had seven supervisions.
• In DuPage County, the number of people granted three or more supervisions went down by more than half, to 632. But the county also had the highest number of supervisions granted to an individual: eight.
• In Lake County, 517 people received three or more supervisions; Will had 395; McHenry had 159; and Kane had 104.
Officials said they needed to do better. All agreed that clogged courtrooms, overworked prosecutors and judges, and a less-than-ideal system for computerizing records contribute to less-than-perfect situation.
Birkett, Kachiroubas, White and DuPage Chief Judge Ann Jorgensen said Wednesday the new computer database program will go a long way to fix the problem.