Just how difficult Dan Towery's job is, working tirelessly to put a face on the tragedy of drunken driving after he lost his daughter in a 1999 crash, piled up on the front page this week in the form of Wayne Fountain.

When the Tippecanoe County magistrate, someone who sees firsthand the personal loss and societal pain of drinking and driving, is the suspect, what is the founder of the local MADD chapter supposed to do? The frustration over Fountain's alleged drunken condition in a late-night wreck Wednesday can't be confined to that of the most vocal advocates.

According to police reports, Fountain's crash on North Ninth Street Road just south of Battle Ground didn't hurt anyone other than the magistrate himself. Fountain's pickup truck left the road after he missed a curve, crashing through a ditch and into a stand of small trees. Fountain, who told police he swerved to avoid an oncoming car, suffered some cuts and bruises.

By the time he reached the Tippecanoe County jail -- after using a phone at a nearby house to call for a ride home, leaving the scene of the crash, getting tracked down by police and being carted more than 10 miles back to Lafayette -- Fountain's blood-alcohol content registered at 0.12 percent. The legal limit is 0.08 percent blood-alcohol content.

Drunken driving is unacceptable in any case. When a crash happens because someone got behind the wheel after having one too many, it can't be called an accident.

But if the police report is accurate, Fountain's crash is particularly objectionable. When he asked a neighbor for a phone, instead of calling the police, he called someone to discretely whisk him away from the scene.

As a magistrate, an appointed judge who fills in to help move crowded dockets along in Tippecanoe County's busiest courts, Fountain has watched as people stumble through the court system, charged with alcohol-fueled offenses. He's sentenced some of those people. And he's no doubt heard the litany of anti-drunken driving crusaders, detailing how crashes devastated their lives.

So what made him get behind the wheel Wednesday night? Why didn't he have the sense to make that phone call before he started driving instead of waiting until after stranding his car in the trees?

Maybe, as Towery has said during his frequent talks to civic groups and student assemblies, it's because most people still don't get it. They fall into a trap, a disconnect that blurs the logic of tougher drunken driving thresholds and stricter penalties at the very moment a tipsy person slides into the driver's seat and decides, I can handle it.

Considering all Fountain had at stake, it's surprising to think he might have believed he was above that human failing, too.