It's not often in our frequently ultra-lenient legal system that a homicidally reckless driver is sent to prison for 16 years. When this relatively harsh sentence was passed on 28-year-old Yaron Bracha of Yahud last Thursday, prosecutor Or Mammon described it as "precedent-setting, yet fitting the crime."

Bracha's parents screamed, rioted in court and compared what was meted out to their son with the paltry price paid by celebrity lawyer Avigdor "Dori" Klagsbald in December 2006 for a crime no less horrific, even if it claimed fewer lives. The comparison is indeed telling, but it is the punishment meted out to Klagsbald that was outrageous, not that handed down to Bracha.

For too long, killer-drivers here have literally got away with murder. Most glaring, indeed, is Klagsbald's case. Its notoriety stemmed partially from the fact that the perpetrator, besides being affluent, was also well-connected. Some of this country's top politicos were among his clients, including Ehud Barak (in the Orr Commission hearings), Ariel Sharon (during the Greek Island and Cyril Kern imbroglios) and Shaul Mofaz (about running for the Knesset shortly after the end of his military service).

IN 2007 Klagsbald was freed after serving a mere eight months for the April 2006 killing of a young mother, Yevgenia Wechsler, and her five-year-old son, Arthur. He had been sentenced to only 15 months in the first place, primarily because he was tried on the lesser charge of negligence rather than criminal negligence or manslaughter, which could theoretically carry a 20-year sentence. The 15 months were further cut to 13. Klagsbald was then paroled for "good behavior."

From the start, he was treated with kid gloves by police investigators - either that, or something more sinister - who astoundingly mishandled his blood-alcohol test and never assessed the speed with which Klagsbald's powerful vehicle rammed, without braking, into the back of Wechsler's stationary Fiat, waiting for the traffic light to change at Tel Aviv's Derech Namir and Einstein intersection. Besides killing the mother and child, Klagsbald wounded three others.

A recidivist offender, Klagsbald had amassed 23 citations before the fatal collision. His rap-sheet lists convictions for excessive speed, reversing recklessly to the point of endangering pedestrians, driving left of a solid white line, illegal U-turns, failure to yield the right of way, stopping inside an intersection, ignoring stop signs, driving the wrong way on one-way streets and using a cell phone while driving. Any of the above offenses could have had fatal consequences.

The presiding judge rejected Klagsbald's contention that he had suffered temporary "loss of orientation" on that April day two years ago, noting that the attorney "drove at unreasonable speed and failed to slow down on approaching the intersection."

And yet Klagsbald was incarcerated for a derisory term.

UNLIKE Klagsbald, Bracha was tried for manslaughter.

At 1:30 a.m. on March 7, 2007, disregarding a red light, he crossed the Ginaton Junction near Lod at 171 km. per hour, ramming into a vehicle taking Egged shift employees home. He killed Moshe Ben-Gigi ,44, the driver, and passengers Aharon Benisho, 55, David Yona, 51, Michael Kashpur, 28, and Yitzhak Cohen, 42. The final fatality was Bracha's own twin brother, Eyal, who sat in the passenger seat of his car. Bracha, in his failed defense, tried to claim Eyal had been the driver.

This time police did test both for speed and substance abuse. Bracha was high on alcohol and drugs.

Although the death toll from Bracha's criminal unruliness was higher than Klagsbald's, the bottom line is the same: Our highways are turned into extreme danger zones by drivers who consider them their private playground. Easygoing and compassionate judges only fuel contempt for the law. Klagsbald's example hardly deterred other wild men at the wheel.

Much needs to be done to increase traffic safety. Improved infrastructure, especially inexpensive instruments such as speed-cameras, can certainly help. But in the final analysis, if the punishment won't fit the crime, drivers will dread nothing.

While the Klagsbald sentence was a travesty at one end of the judicial continuum, therefore, the Bracha sentence is anything but inappropriate. It is, rather, a powerful disincentive to reckless motoring and a hopeful sign that this society is, at last, opting to protect itself.

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