Arkansas urged to crack down harder on drunken drivers
Posted on Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Arkansas is among more than two dozen states the National Transportation Safety Board says haven’t done enough to rein in hard-core drinkers who drive, resulting in more lives lost on the state’s highways.
“The safety board believes that the key to reducing the number of people killed by drunk drivers is to target hard-core drinking drivers,” Mark V. Rosenker, acting board chairman, said Tuesday at a Washington briefing before Thanksgiving, a busy travel holiday.
The state has adopted five of the 11 elements of what the board says is a model program to keep drivers off the road who have more than one drunken-driving conviction or who register a 0. 15 percent blood-alcohol content or higher. But the board would like to see Arkansas and 24 other states adopt more.
“We all need to understand that a person who reaches a high-BAC level is not engaging in social drinking,” Rosenker said. “In just under three hours, about the time it takes to watch a football or baseball game, a man weighing 180 pounds would have to drink eight beers [one beer every 20 minutes ] to reach this BAC level.”
In 2007, alcohol factored in 17, 000 traffic fatalities, or 41 percent of all highway deaths in the United States, according to the board. In Arkansas drunken driving accounted for 182 deaths last year, or 28 percent of all traffic fatalities, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
The organization’s “Repeat Offense Data” listing says about a third of all people convicted of drunken driving in the United States have a previous conviction.
More than 34, 000 Arkansans have three or more drunken-driving convictions, and 22, 306 have five or more, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data gleaned from state systems to assess the scope of the problem. Arkansas also holds the distinction of having been home to the man who reportedly had the most drunken-driving related convictions in the nation — 40. Teresa Belew, head of the Arkansas MADD office, identified him as Larry French of Moro, who died in 2006.
Arkansas is one of the 25 states the safety board says should adopt three or more elements of the model program to show “sufficient progress” in reducing hardcore drinking and driving, and 20 other states should adopt one or two program elements while five states, having eight of the 11 program elements, have shown “sufficient progress.” Those latter states are California, New Hampshire, Ohio, Utah and Virginia.
“It’s time for state legislatures to implement comprehensive measures if we want to make progress again and reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths,” Rosenker said.
The elements address detecting, arresting and adjudicating repeat offenders. The elements Arkansas already has adopted include administrative license revocation if someone fails or refuses a blood-alcohol test, sobriety checkpoints, elimination of diversion programs that allow purging a drunken-driving offense, and restrictions in place that block plea bargains in drunken-driving cases.
The elements that Arkansas lacks include a record-retention period of 10 years or more; Arkansas’ is five years. Arkansas also isn’t among states that have individualized sanctions aimed at hard-core drunken drivers. Nor does Arkansas have a provision for a “hot sheet” program to identify drunken drivers who might drive on a suspended or revoked license. Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Maine and South Carolina are the only states that have that provision.
While the safety board says Arkansas can do more, MADD’s campaign to eliminate drunken driving ranked Arkansas 11 th best in the nation in the percentage of alcohol-related traffic deaths.
The safety board report comes shortly after the release of another report from the American Emergency Nurses Association that ranked Arkansas last on its scorecard of state roadway laws on the basis of 13 issues: seat-belt use, child passenger safety, graduated driver licensing for teens, university motorcycle helmet requirements, ignition interlock devices to prevent drunken driving, and giving the proper officials the authority to develop, maintain and evaluate a statewide trauma system.
MADD is helping back proposed legislation to require ignition interlocks on vehicles belonging to people convicted of drunken driving for the first time. A similar initiative in New Mexico saw deaths from alcohol-related fatalities decline nearly 10 percent, Belew said. The organization also is backing a proposal that would require anyone convicted of felony drunken driving to face felony charges on subsequent drunkendriving arrests.
Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for the state’s 6 th Judicial District, comprising Pulaski and Perry counties, said that while he thinks Arkansas does a good job of enforcing drunken-driving laws already on the books, he’s open to new ways to address drunken-driving deaths in Arkansas, particularly if the data support them.
Most first-time offenders are frightened enough by the process and sanctions to refrain from driving while drinking again, Jegley said. He, like the safety board, would prefer to target drunken drivers convicted two or three times.
“That’s really an indication that the first or second DWI conviction didn’t get their attention,” Jegley said.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
