The get-tough legislation targeting habitually bad drivers is named after Tina Turcotte. It was her death at the hands of truck driver Scott Hewitt last year that focused attention on the problem of people continuing to drive even though their licenses have been suspended.

The legislation could have just as easily been named for Mark Blanchette.

Blanchette a promising young man, just 18 years old and headed off to college – and a writer who had worked for the Sun Journal – died in August 1996, killed by Daniel Asselin.

Asselin was driving drunk. He didn’t have a driver’s license, because it had been suspended in both Massachusetts and Maine. He spent four years in prison for Blanchette’s death. After his release, he was arrested again in 2005, this time in Bangor. He was convicted again of driving after his license was revoked and operating while under the influence of alcohol.

State Sen. Peggy Rotundo and state Rep. Elaine Makas testified Monday in support of Tina’s Law, L.D. 1906, on behalf of Blanchette and his family.

“Mark’s bags were packed for his first semester of college when a few days before he was to leave for school a drunk driver killed him as he walked near his home,” Rotundo said. “The driver had nine suspensions on his record and had a legal driver’s license for only one month of the 10 years in which he had been driving. If this proposed law had been in place nine years ago, Mark Blanchette might still be alive today.”

Makas echoed the importance of cracking down on horrible drivers.

“It won’t help Mark Blanchette or Tina Turcotte, or the many others, including their loved ones, who suffer every day from the past actions of these repeat offenders,” Makas said. “And it might not stop most of the 1 in 25 people committing the same crime of driving with a suspended license. But it may prevent one tragedy, and maybe one is enough to make this legislation worthwhile – one person who does not have to die, one family who is not sentenced to a lifetime of loss, one community that is not deprived of a valued member, one nightmare that does not have to happen.”

The human toll of habitual offenders gives Tina’s Law power to move a skeptical Legislature. But the details of the legislation are not so clear-cut as the desire to do something – anything – to reduce the chances of another lost life at the hands of a repeat offender.

Rep. Gary Plummer raised an important consideration.

“I’ve learned there are a lot of unintended consequences to things we pass,” Plummer said, according to The Associated Press. Others questioned long prison sentences, vague language concerning what constitutes an injury, mandatory minimum sentences and how to carry out vehicle seizures.

A number of amendments have been submitted already, and the bill will likely change before it is considered by the full Legislature.

There is clearly a problem with people continuing to drive after having their licenses revoked. The state says there are about 70,000 drivers in the state with more than five suspensions, 8,000 with 15 or more, and half of all serious accidents involve people who are driving on suspended licenses.

Every person in the state is put at risk when these drivers illegally get behind the wheel and tear down the road. The difficult task for lawmakers will be to separate out the emotion spurring them to action and real policy prescriptions that will make highways safer.