ALBUQUERQUE — For the last seven years, Horace, a four-time convicted drunk driver, has lived with an electronic probation officer in the front seat of his red sedan. The device, an "ignition interlock," acts as a breath-alcohol analyzer and requires him to prove he's sober before the engine will start.
New Mexico, which led the nation in alcohol-related crash rates for years, in 2005 became the first state to require the interlock for every convicted drunk driver. The interlock legislation has been the centerpiece of the state's sweeping anti-drunk-driving efforts, which include more sobriety checkpoints, tougher mandatory sentencing laws for driving while intoxicated, and the creation of the nation's first DWI czar.
The initiatives have paid off.
New Mexico, home to high rates of alcohol abuse and miles and miles of open road, is now ranked 25th in alcohol-related fatal crash rates and is expected to place lower when the latest rankings are compiled later this year. From 2004 to 2008, the number of DWI fatalities here dropped 35%, from 219 to 143.
"We want all 50 states to do what New Mexico has done," said Chuck Hurley, chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD has mounted an aggressive campaign to persuade the rest of the country to require interlocks.
If each of the more than 1.4 million Americans convicted each year of drunk driving were forced to install one, Hurley said, 4,000 lives would be saved annually.
In California, the Assembly recently approved a bill that would fund a five-year pilot program to require interlocks for convicted drunk drivers in Los Angeles, Alameda and Sacramento counties.
Assembly Bill 91, sponsored by Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), will be heard by the Senate Public Safety Committee today.
Eleven states have phased in mandatory interlock laws since New Mexico did so, including six this year.
But as more states turn to interlocks because of the good they can do, there are daily reminders of what they can't.
In Santa Fe recently, a man who police say was drunk and driving in the wrong lane plowed into a car carrying five teenagers, killing four and severely injuring the fifth.
The driver, 27-year-old Scott Owens, had been convicted of DWI and street racing in 2001, four years before the first-offender interlock law was passed.
