In late October, Copenhagen mourned after a five-year-old girl was killed in a hit-and-run incident that involved dangerous driving.
Now, the Justice Ministry has announced that it intends to crack down harder on dangerous driving.
Justice minister Nick Hækkerup has proposed to increase the punishment for involuntary manslaughter due to hazardous driving by 50 percent – from current three years imprisonment to 4.5 years.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen horrible episodes involving insane people killing others through their crazy driving. It’s deeply tragic and illustrates the need for tougher punishment than there is available today,” said Hækkerup.
Hækkerup went on to say that the government was negotiating with other parties of Parliament in a bid to curb dangerous driving in Denmark.
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Young men dominate stats
The new proposal is expected to be submitted in January and it comes in unison with a citizenry proposal regarding the same issue, which has now been signed by at least 50,000 people – enough to be processed by Parliament.
Looking into 27 accidents in 2018 that involved dangerous driving, several trends emerge.
In all the accidents expect for one, the driver was a man, and in over half, the driver was between 18 and 24 – the rest were in their 30s.
A quarter of the drivers didn’t have a license to operate the vehicle they were driving at the time of the accident and the majority had prior convictions for traffic violations.
In 66 percent of cases, the drivers were not in their own cars – many of these kinds of accidents involve borrowed or leased vehicles.
Earlier this month, new figures showed that 199 people were killed in traffic-related accidents last year, a 16 percent increase from 2018.
