This just in: Interlock company Smart Start is suing North Carolina’s DMV. According to the Associated Press:
“The company filed a lawsuit Friday at North Carolina’s Office of Administrative Hearings, accusing the Division of Motor Vehicles of unfairly blocking its attempts to win the state’s contract for the devices.”
The North Carolina interlock market is worth about $10 million a year. No wonder Smart Start wants in. And if legislators expand the use of interlocks to more offenders, those profits could triple. Gee, maybe that’s why Smart Start lobbies for increased use of interlocks.
After the California legislature soundly rejected a nickel-per-drink alcohol tax increase last year and the Assembly Health Committee twice voted down a dime-per-drink tax hike “fee,” you would think that the anti-alcohol legislators introducing these proposals would get the message. Not so for Assemblyman Jim Beall (D-San Jose).
Despite his best efforts – and coordination with the notoriously anti-alcohol Marin Institute – Beall’s 10-cents-per-drink tax increase “fee,” failed for a second time in committee yesterday. But, the eager Assemblyman says he’ll be back soon with another tax hike proposal:
“I’m going to wipe it off and come back in a few weeks with something different.”
Not only is right now a terrible time to raise taxes as Americans struggle with financial concerns and unemployment, but alcohol tax increases always hurt businesses, negatively impact the poorest among us, and kill jobs in the hospitality industry.
The hospitality industry isn’t alone in opposition toward the alcohol “fee.” Check out this video we came across of some pretty angry college students confronting Beall:
Our advice to Beall: Realize that California doesn’t want an alcohol “fee,” tax increase, or whatever else you call it. Don’t come back in a few weeks with the something cut from the same cloth.
USA TODAY’s editorial on Dec. 28 didn’t mention that mandating ignition interlocks for all drunken-driving offenders is an incremental step toward putting alcohol sensors in all cars.
It’s great that California wants to get drunk drivers off the roads. But, a hyped-up, waste-of-money checkpoints push isn’t the way to do it. Just look at the results of California’s 2008 roadblock campaign: over a million vehicles went through 1,469 checkpoints. Police arrested just one-third of 1 percent of those motorists for drunk driving.
And 2009 doesn’t look much better. Checkpoints in Barstow, Costa Mesa, Fairfield, Fort Bragg, Orange County, Redding, Ripon, San Francisco, San Rafael, and Ukiah caught zero drunk drivers. Checkpoints in Coachella, Clovis, Folsom, Fresno, Martinez, Norco, Palm Springs, Petaluma, Porterville, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Maria made just 1 arrest each, and stopped thousands upon thousands of innocent drivers in the process.
If you’re thinking 1 arrest is better than nothing, think about this: saturation patrols in Alameda County, Fontana, North County, San Bernardino, and Visalia caught anywhere from 6 to 47 drunk drivers each.
Checkpoints are just PR stunts – a way to look like you’re cracking down, when really you’re just standing around. But, that won’t stop the OTS from going into spin mode:
Since OTS and law enforcement began placing increased emphasis and funding toward sobriety checkpoints in 2006, alcohol-related deaths have declined in California. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System, DUI deaths declined in California by 9.1 percent between 2007 and 2008, marking a total decrease of nearly 21 percent from the most recent high point in 2005.
As we’ve pointed out, anyone calling the drop in fatalities in 2008 more than a fluke is fooling themselves. Or maybe they’re just fooling you.
Yesterday, the Baltimore Sun posted a decidedly unbiasedblog entry responding to last week’s ABI blog post on Thomas Meighan. Had the writer called us, we could have explained a couple of things that he got wrong. We’ll have to settle for an ex post facto breakdown. Here is the piece in full, with our corrections and notations in red.
Can state track thousands of interlocks?
The American Beverage Institute opposes mandatory ignition interlocks for first-time drunk driving convictions. So Sarah Kapenstein of the institute coouldn’t [sic] wait to share an item from the group’s blog with me and my readers.
Essentially, what the institute is doing is trying to use the tragic case of Thomas Meighan, the man accused of killing Johns Hopkins student Miriam Frankl (rright [sic] ) in a hit-and-run, to advance its position [No, that is what MADD and the Baltimore Sun are doing.].Meighan, a serial drunk driver, is charged with operating a motor vehicle in defiance of an order to use an interlock device.
At first, I thought this was a classic case of lobbyist logic[ABI is not a lobbying group. We are a restaurant trade association representing 220 Maryland restaurants.] — using one high-profile failure as an excuse to scrap an otherwise good idea. But on reflection, the institute raises a good question — even if it does so in a crass way. [Reread our original post. There is nothing crass about it. We call for Meighan to be punished as harshly as possible.]
Proponents of using the interlocks for first-time offenders need to make the case that requiring the the [sic] Motor Vehicle Administration to monitor large numbers of drivers ordered to use ignition interlocks devices wouldn’t degrade current efforts to keep tabs on the hard-core offenders. [The American Probation and Parole Association letter that we linked to in our post pleads against such an interlock mandate: “A workforce of probation officers is needed to ensure compliance with court-ordered ignition interlocks. Probation officers nationally already have excessive caseloads and unmanageable workloads… Furthermore, requiring ignition interlocks for all DWI offenders is an unnecessary and costly response.”]
My impression, however, is that there’s not much the MVA can do to assure compliance by folks who are determined to game the system. So there might not be any harm to existing compliance efforts from adding the new interlock customers. A high percentage of people will always comply because it’s the law and there are punishments for being caught breaking it[Wrong. 68% of offenders in New Mexico – the state that boasts the HIGHEST compliance rate with an interlock mandate – do not install the devices.].
If Meighan is found to have bypassed the ignition interlock requirement, the real lesson is that there are some cases in which the only effective measure is vehicle confiscation. In cases where a driver disables an interlock device, there should be automatic impoundment upon arrest and auction upon conviction. Does the poor offender need to drive to work to feed the babies? Tough. Take a bus. Walk. Put the babies up for adoption[Now that’s crass.]. He or she shoulda thought of that before defying a court order.
An Associated Press story this week covered the decrease in drunk driving fatalities from 2007 to 2008. In an all-too-predictable move, MADD is attempting to credit harsh interlock laws for the drop:
Chuck Hurley, the chief executive officer of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also noted that improvements were made in states such as New Mexico and Arizona which have adopted tough laws using breath-monitoring ignition interlock devices for offenders.
It’s disingenuous for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to credit ignition interlock laws with the decrease in drunk driving fatalities in New Mexico and Arizona.
Fatalities went down in 43 states, not just the handful of states with interlock mandates on the books in 2008. In fact, the biggest decreases occurred in Wisconsin, Maine, and Vermont – none of which have the draconian interlock laws of the two southwest states. Vermont doesn’t even use the devices at all.
These numbers don’t tell us much about drunk driving behavior or the effectiveness of interlock laws. The decrease in fatalities can be attributed to a bad economy and high gas prices. Put simply, Americans drove less in 2008.
There’s no credible data to support MADD’s claim that interlock laws save lives. But it’s no surprise that they’d try to spin the numbers.
Chalk up another entry in MADD’s long, sad history of distorting stats and facts to push for greater regulation.
Sen. Jamie B. Raskin and Del. Benjamin F. Kramer both said they will introduce legislation to require the Motor Vehicle Administration to install ignition interlock devices in the cars of convicted drunken drivers, including first-time offenders.
The proposed legislation comes in the wake of an October incident in which the vehicle of a previously convicted drunken driver struck and killed a Johns Hopkins University student in Baltimore.
But he didn’t, and now a young woman has been killed.
As we’ve been explaining to lawmakers, implementing and maintaining an interlock program is time consuming and expensive. That’s why we can’t stress enough how important it is for states to target the hardcore offenders – high-BAC and repeat-offenders – like Meighan. Mandating interlocks for one-sip-over-the-limit, first-time offenders is neither an effective policy nor a good use of limited state resources. Especially because government statistics show it’s the hardcore offenders who cause the vast majority of fatal crashes.
Maryland couldn’t even ensure that an eight-time drunk driver installed an interlock. How does anyone expect the state to enforce an interlock mandate for the 24,000 or so other cases that will flood the system should MADD’s bill pass?
UPDATE: We just learned that Meighan actually has 9 previous convictions. Thanks to Baltimore Sun reporter Tricia Bishop for the updated information.
You see, sobriety checkpoints are illegal in Wisconsin because state law says that officers only can detain motorists based on a reasonable suspicion of a violation. So, why would the police chief – the highest authority on stopping crime and keeping residents safe – station a dozen officers at a voluntary checkpoint that will be easily avoided by every single criminal? Supposedly to serve as a (surprise, surprise) PR gimmick:
“He said the aim of the program is not necessarily to see how many drunken drivers police can intercept. Rather, it is to send a message to motorists that Neenah is a risky place to drive drunk.”
ABI started a campaign against sobriety checkpoints last week prior to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. So far, our efforts have resulted in a story on CBSnews.com, articles in the Courier-Times and News-Post, and stories on NBC and CBS affiliates in California, Florida, Maine, Mississippi, and Virginia. In addition, the Kansas City Star, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the New Jersey’s Courier Post published ABI op-eds against checkpoints.
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has decided not to prosecute John Kerry’s daughter Alexandra for drunk driving. Kerry’s daughter, you might remember, was driving below the legal limit. It doesn’t hurt that she comes from an important family. But if you get “caught” driving after having a glass of beer or wine with dinner, the prosecutor might not be so kind.
It’s curious why state law enforcement target under-the-limit drivers when we know that it’s the high-BAC drivers who cause the vast majority of fatal crashes and are the riskiest drivers. Take a look at this chart:
In fact, the average BAC of a driver involved in a fatal crash is .19 BAC – that’s more than double the legal limit of .08 (and more than triple what Kerry’s BAC was)! Police, state legislatures, and public awareness campaigns should target this dangerous population – not sober drivers like Alexandra Kerry.
