ALBANY - Special courts should be set up in New York to adjudicate cases involving persistent drunken, speeding or aggressive drivers, a state lawmaker says.

Joseph Lentol, the chairman of the state Assembly's Codes Committee, said reckless or impaired driving is occurring frequently enough that it is constituting a quality-of-life problem in New York.

If those cases could get special attention in courts that have expertise in dangerous driving, they would be handled swiftly and with the seriousness they deserve, Lentol said.

It's the idea of concentration so that they think twice about it," said Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat. "It would provide more of a deterrent to dangerous drivers to know that they are not going to get short shrift and get shuffled around the courthouse."

At a legislative hearing last week on the next state budget, chief state Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman called special courts for dangerous drivers "an interesting idea."

Chauncey Parker, Gov. George Pataki's director of criminal justice services, said his office is exploring the driving court idea.

"We're willing to look at anything" that can better protect public safety, Parker said.

There are currently a series of special courts - called "special parts" - in the state, especially in New York City and other populous counties. They handle commercial, drug, domestic violence, gun and other specialized, often highly technical cases.

"We have a ton of specialized courts because they work," said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration.

While not criticizing Lentol's idea, Bookstaver said there may be a jurisdictional problem in setting up special courts for impaired or reckless driving.

Often, charges brought against dangerous drivers are violations - not criminal misdemeanors or felonies - and those lower-level offenses are generally handled by town and village courts, not state courts.

But Lentol said the special parts could be established at the lower-court and higher-court levels in New York.

Some traffic-related offenses such as vehicular homicide or repeated driving while intoxicated violations are prosecuted as felonies in New York.

Several bills have been filed in the Legislature in recent years to stiffen penalties for dangerous driving. David Gantt, the chairman of the Assembly's transportation committee, has been sponsoring a bill for years to create a traffic offense of aggressive driving when people drive in a way that creates a "substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person."

Gantt's bill would make aggressive driving a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.