Three recent vehicle crashes illustrate the danger that people who drive while impaired can pose to anyone who ventures onto our streets and highways.

Fortunately, no one was killed or even seriously hurt.

But that might be best attributed to coincidence.

According to police reports and court records, both drivers are suspected of being intoxicated.

The first crash happened on March 22. Katrina Nicole Dacus, 34, of Culver, failed to stop at a stop sign in Redmond and collided with a Baker School District bus carrying 14 students attending the state FFA convention.

Dacus is charged with drunken driving and 25 other misdemeanor charges.

On April 19, a car driven by Jamie Inez Gregory, 48, of Port Orchard, Washington, went through a stop sign in Hermiston and crashed into a vehicle driven by Ashlie Thacker, who grew up in Baker City. Gregory fled the scene but was arrested soon after on suspicion of drunken driving.

Two days later, an Oregon State Police trooper arrested Gregory on Interstate 84 near Durkee after watching her drive a U-Haul moving truck at speeds he estimated at 75 mph, even after one of the front tires blew and disintegrated.

Gregory pleaded guilty to drunken driving and eluding a police officer in the Baker County incident. She has not been charged in the Hermiston crash.

The insidious thing about intoxicated drivers is that the justice system doesn’t punish them based on the carnage they could have caused, but didn’t.

This is reasonable.

Yet incidents such as those in Redmond, Hermiston and Baker County are troubling. Neither driver is likely to get a significant sentence in jail or prison, if any time at all.

Had either driver killed someone, the penalty would be more severe, to be sure.

The challenge is how to convince people who are impaired to stay off the road, or at least not get behind the wheel.

Lawmakers should at least discuss imposing harsher punishments for impaired drivers even in situations that don’t turn into tragedies.