The terror of a rural New Mexico Thanksgiving is not found inside visiting relatives' trailers or at the bottom of a 10 gallon turkey fryer. It is found on the roads, where drunkards lurch their uninsured trucks along lanes that exist only in their imagination. That said, the last year saw an 11 percent decline in booze-related road deaths in the Land of Enchantment. Why? Because the state now mandates that every DUI offender get an ignition interlock installed on their vehicle, preventing them from starting it until they blow into the breathalyzer-like device.
With about 13,000 people dying anually in drunken driving accidents on America's roads, Mothers Against Drink Driving (MADD) wants to see this law go nationwide. As MADD president Glynn Birch puts it:
Interlocks are a great tool, but easy to circumnavigate, as they cannot be "keyed" to the operator's breath: any sober person can start the car. With the local success here in N.M., however, it's hard to see what could be lost by at least trying it elsewhere. It's not as if we're making progress with the current jurisprudential approach of forcing first-time convicts to undergo the life-changing crucible of having to turn up for a seminar.
MADD Announces National Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving [MADD via Yahoo!]
Other stories at Gear Factor:
