|
Home Search |
Published on Tuesday, February 3, 2004
in the Palatka Daily News
A state law is now in effect requiring dash-mounted machines to keep habitual drunken drivers from driving with alcohol on their breath.
Ignition interlock devices hook to a dash-mounted Breathalyzer machine and will not allow anyone with more than an 0.05 blood alcohol level on their breath to start the vehicle.
The law went into effect Sunday.
Capt. Brent Coates of the Florida Highway Patrol office in East Palatka said Monday the ignition device should serve as a deterrent and another tool to prevent drunken driving.
"It's a good law that should prevent impaired drivers from getting into their vehicles and driving," he said. "It's a first step in the direction. It should have an overlap effect - it should reduce alcohol-related crashes. Hopefully, if a person was drunk, he would not be able to get into his car. Common sense would tell you that if they're not in their car, they're not going to cause an accident."
The device would be installed following a second drunken driving conviction, although judges will have discretion to order its use by first-time offenders.
Monitoring units also have measures to prevent a sober person from having the ability to start the vehicle for someone under the influence of alcohol. Following the reinstatement of driving privileges, those convicted of DUI will be ordered to use the device for at least a year. The person convicted of the DUI offense would pay $70 for installation and $67.50 a month for a monitoring and recalibration during the period the instrument is attached to the vehicle. That work will be done by private sector DUI schools under contract with the state.
Published reports have said some people are criticizing the cost of the device. Coates' response: Don't drink and drive in the first place.
Drivers convicted of a second or third DUI charge since July 1, 2002 are subject to the new rule, which was approved in December by the Florida Cabinet and Gov. Jeb Bush.
Nearly 4,000 letters were sent last week from the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to drivers who may need the device before reapplying for a license following a DUI suspension.
Under the new law, it's now a misdemeanor to refuse a Breathalyzer test. Under state law, any driver stopped with a blood alcohol of 0.08 or more is subject to arrest.
At least 42 other states have some form of the ignition interlock program already in place, said Fred Dickinson, executive director of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Roughly 1,000 highway fatalities in the state last year were alcohol-related, he said.
All states are required by a 2000 federal law to have the program in place or risk losing up to 3 percent of their highway construction funds.
The state FHP runs about a year behind in compiling DUI figures, said Capt. Dwight Parker of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office. In 2001, 194 people were arrested for DUI; in 2000, 222 and in 1999, 334, FHP records show. Statewide in 2001, there were 58,376 DUI arrests.
Parker said last month that his office is serious about cracking down on impaired drivers. The sheriff's office received a grant in December 2001 through the Florida Department of Transportation's Safety Office to create a DUI unit that consists of two deputies.
Since the sheriff's office got the grant, deputies have made 420 DUI arrests, Parker said in January. The DUI deputies made 340 of those, he said.
Coates commended the sheriff's office for doing "a great job with their DUI unit."
Parker said Monday he hasn't read the new law and didn't want to comment on it until he has reviewed it completely.