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As part of a new program to curb alcoholism and drunk driving in the Eastern European country of Moldova, motorists convicted of driving drunk are now given the option to kick it with corpses if they want to get their driving licenses back.
This program, which was approved last year in the small European country according to Publika, offers drivers a redemption and “reeducation” program. Drivers looking to earn back the licenses they forfeit immediately upon being arrested for driving drunk are given the option to pay about $225 to enter the grueling program, which sees them volunteer for gruesome work at medical facilities.
This may sound like a cheap way to get your license back, but the average Moldovan’s monthly salary is around $340, according to Check in Price. As each program is 12 sessions in length, or about three months, it’s not just an expensive endeavor, but an arduous one.
Under this program, convicted DUIers assist with the treatment of road accident patients at hospitals, or when there are none receiving care, give coroners a hand at mortuaries. Publika reports that the first of these programs recently commenced at a mortuary in Chisinau, Moldova, attended by six men convicted of driving under the influence. Their duties for that day including giving the coroner assistance with washing the corpses before their autopsies, as well as placing the bodies in the “body drawers.” They were also to participate in said autopsies, as well as evacuating the bodies of their waste products (urine and feces).
Not all of the participants could stomach the work; one man dashed back out of the mortuary only a few minutes into the day’s activities, and though he’ll have another shot at the program if he wants, it doesn’t look like it’s an opportunity he’ll be taking. The five remaining men in the inaugural reeducation program will have a chance at their licenses again, and even then, only after taking their license tests anew.
“He encouraged me not to drink alcohol anymore, not a drop in my life, because I do not want to get up there anymore [sic],” said one of the unnamed participants. “What you see here, the experience of the morgue remains like a lesson.”
“It will be a huge psychological impact because they do not all resist [sic]. Only the smell and the sight of the body and it is already a psychological impact on the person,” said Valeriu Savciuc, director of the Center of Forensic Medicine, in a statement to Publika.
“In order to get there, disciplining these subjects needs a maximum impact, so that they can ‘re-socialize,’ become more disciplined in traffic. To become aware of what the problem is, how they have come to this situation and to do not repeat,” added Andrei Iavorschi, head of the National Probation Inspectorate.
