re: OT's Thoughts on this (fatal) drunk driving punishment

The punishment seems fair. Instead of knocking out a jail sentence all at once he's going to have to take vacation from work every year just to sit in jail for the next 9 years. For some legal processes (I.e. Expungement - he won't be able to start that process until the x years after the last jail sentence is done, which is now pushed back nearly a decade).

To me the issue with DUI laws in this country is that they're too harsh at the 0.08-0.10 level and too lenient at the 0.15+ level, where most of the fatal accidents occur. This creates a culture where most adults have broken the law (although maybe they weren't caught) and generates a lot of sympathy for the crime of endangering people's live drunk driving a vehicle.

You make driving at 0.08-0.12 the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket (vs a misdemeanor) and you'll generate a lot of public support for increasing penalties and enforcement of extreme DUI's.

Unfortunately, for every person who ends a life by driving drunk, there's hundreds who been forced to to a roadside sobriety test at a DUI checkpoint after admitting to drinking 2 beers at dinner.