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A Dubious Honour

So New Mexico, which has long had an unusually high drunken-driving rate, decided some tough love was in order. It now mandates interlocks for anyone convicted of DWI. First offenders get them for one year, second offenders two years, and so on. This is a drastic innovation: Most states don’t require them, even for repeat […]

So New Mexico, which has long had an unusually high drunken-driving rate, decided some tough love was in order. It now mandates interlocks for anyone convicted of DWI. First offenders get them for one year, second offenders two years, and so on. This is a drastic innovation: Most states don’t require them, even for repeat offenders.

New Mexico now has more than 5,000 in operation, more per capita than any other state. Last year, while drunken-driving deaths were rising across the nation, it saw an 11 percent drop in alcohol-related traffic deaths. ~Steve Chapman

I won’t go into the reasons why New Mexico has such an abysmal record in having had such a high drunk-driving rate for so many decades, but it is interesting to find out that the interlock law has been successful in reducing fatalities.  Of course, it is something of a dubious honour for my state to be a pioneer in finding new and innovative ways to keep drunks off the road, so many of them are there in New Mexico, but perhaps it will bring some benefit to the rest of the country.  There are always ways to fool the interlock device, if a sober person is daft enough to aid a drunk friend in starting his car, but it is a reasonably good solution to what has been an intractable problem for us.

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